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.
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List of the most influential people in Biology,
#16451
Arvid Lindau
1892 - 1958 (66 years)
Arvid Vilhelm Lindau was a Swedish pathologist and bacteriologist born in Malmö. Lindau studied medicine at the University of Lund and received his training in bacteriology at the University of Copenhagen and at Harvard . In 1933 he succeeded John Forssman as chair of general pathology, bacteriology and general health science at Lund.
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Carl Henrik Boheman
1796 - 1868 (72 years)
Carl Henrik Boheman was a Swedish entomologist. Boheman studied at Lund University and trained as an officer, participating in the invasion of Norway in 1814. He had been an enthusiastic entomologist since childhood, and was called by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1841 to the position of professor and keeper of the Department of Entomology of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. He had been made a member of the Academy in 1838. He retired from the Museum in 1867.
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Mikhail Stepanovich Voronin
1838 - 1903 (65 years)
Mikhail Stepanovich Voronin was a prominent Russian biologist, a botanist with particular expertise in fungi. Education Voronin was born in St Petersburg on 21 June 1838 into the family of a rich merchant, which was subsequently ennobled. He received an excellent home education. One of his teachers was Nikolay Chernyshevsky . M.S. Voronin had a perfect command of three foreign languages: French, German and English. In 1854 Voronin entered Saint Petersburg State University in the Department of Natural Sciences. Professor Lev Semionovich Tsenkovsky excited in him an interest in investigating the lower plants, among which fungi were placed that time.
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Khachatour Koshtoyants
1900 - 1961 (61 years)
Khachatour Koshtoyants was a Soviet and Russian physiologist, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union , Member of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences , Professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State University , Doktor Nauk in Biological Sciences .
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James Bell Pettigrew
1832 - 1908 (76 years)
James Bell Pettigrew was a Scottish anatomist and noted naturalist, aviation pioneer and museum curator. He was a distinguished naturalist in Britain, and Professor of Anatomy at St Andrews University from 1875 until his death.
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Johannes Theodor Schmalhausen
1849 - 1894 (45 years)
Johannes Theodor Schmalhausen was a Russian botanist of German descent, known for his studies of East-European plants. Early life and education Johannes Theodor Schmalhausen was born in St Petersburg. His father was a librarian at the Russian Academy of Sciences. After attending the Gymnasium, Schmalhausen studied botany at the University of St. Petersburg graduating with a magister degree in 1874. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the University for the botanical essay "On plant hybrids. Observations from St. Petersburg", was selected for a Professorial career and sent abroad from 1874 to 1876.
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Edward Newman
1801 - 1876 (75 years)
Edward Newman was an English entomologist, botanist and writer. Newman was born in Hampstead into a Quaker family. Both his parents were keen naturalists, and he was further encouraged to take an interest in the natural world at his boarding school in Painswick. He left school at sixteen to join his father's business in Guildford, moving to Deptford in 1826 to take over a rope-making business. Here he met many of the leading entomologists of the day, including Edward Doubleday, and was a founder member of the Entomological Club. In 1832 he was elected as editor of the club's journal, The Ento...
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Rosa Smith Eigenmann
1858 - 1947 (89 years)
Rosa Smith Eigenmann was an American ichthyologist , as well as a writer, editor, former curator at the California Academy of Sciences, and the first librarian of the San Diego Society of Natural History. She "is considered the first woman ichthyologist in the United States." Eigenmann was also the first woman to become president of Indiana University's chapter of Sigma Xi, an honorary science society. She authored twelve published papers of her own between 1880 and 1893, and collaborated with her husband, Carl H. Eigenmann, as "Eigenmann & Eigenmann" on twenty-five additional works between 1888 and 1893.
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Albert von Bezold
1836 - 1868 (32 years)
Albert von Bezold was a German physiologist born in Ansbach. He studied at Munich, Würzburg and Berlin, where he was an assistant to Emil Du Bois-Reymond . Later he was a professor of physiology at Jena and Würzburg .
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August W. Eichler
1839 - 1887 (48 years)
August Wilhelm Eichler, also known under his Latinized name, Augustus Guilielmus Eichler , was a German botanist who developed a new system of classification of plants to reflect the concept of evolution. His author abbreviation in botany is Eichler.
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Santiago Roth
1850 - 1924 (74 years)
Santiago Roth was a Swiss Argentine paleontologist and academic known for his fossil collections and Patagonian expeditions. Life Kaspar Jakob was born and raised in Herisau, Canton Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Switzerland, as the oldest of 12 children. He attended school in the nearby town of St. Gallen, where his teacher Bernhard Wartmann raised his interest in the science of nature. Wartmann was a well known botanist and director of the Museum of History of Nature in St. Gallen.
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Charles Horton Peck
1833 - 1917 (84 years)
Charles Horton Peck was an American mycologist of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He was the New York State Botanist from 1867 to 1915, a period in which he described over 2,700 species of North American fungi.
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John R. Napier
1917 - 1987 (70 years)
John Russell Napier, MRCS, LRCP, D.Sc. was a British primatologist, paleoanthropologist, and physician, who is notable for his work with Homo habilis and OH 7, as well as on human and primate hands/feet. During his life he was widely considered a leading authority on primate taxonomy, but is perhaps most famous to the general public for his research on Bigfoot.
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Frederick Smith
1805 - 1879 (74 years)
Frederick Smith was a British entomologist who worked at the zoology department of the British Museum from 1849, specialising in the Hymenoptera. Smith was born near York to William Smith and went to school at Leeds. He then studied under landscape engraver W.B. Cooke along with his nephew William Edward Shuckard. Together they took an interest in insects, especially the ants and bees. In 1841, following the death of William Bainbridge, he became a curator of the collections and the library of the Entomological Society of London. As an engraver he produced copies based on the works of Turner, Constable and David Roberts.
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Per Axel Rydberg
1860 - 1931 (71 years)
Per Axel Rydberg was a Swedish-born, American botanist who was the first curator of the New York Botanical Garden Herbarium. Biography Per Axel Rydberg was born in Odh, Västergötland, Sweden and emigrated to the United States in 1882. From 1884 to 1890, he taught mathematics at Luther Academy in Wahoo, Nebraska, while he studied at the University of Nebraska. He graduated from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and . He earned his graduate degree from Columbia University .
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Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers
1821 - 1901 (80 years)
Félix Joseph Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers was a French biologist, anatomist and zoologist born in Montpezat in the department of Lot-et-Garonne. He was a leading authority in the field of malacology. He studied medicine in Paris, and worked at Necker Hospital under Armand Trousseau . Later on, with Jules Haime , he travelled to the Balearic Islands to study marine life. In 1854 he returned to Paris as an assistant to Henri Milne-Edwards , and soon afterwards became a professor of zoology in Lille.
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John Gilbert Baker
1834 - 1920 (86 years)
John Gilbert Baker was an English botanist. His son was the botanist Edmund Gilbert Baker . Biography Baker was born in Guisborough in North Yorkshire, the son of John and Mary Baker, and died in Kew.
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Henri Filhol
1843 - 1902 (59 years)
Henri Filhol was a French medical doctor, malacologist and naturalist born in Toulouse. He was the son of Édouard Filhol , curator of the Muséum de Toulouse. After receiving his early education in Toulouse, he moved to Paris, where he obtained doctorates in medicine and science. In 1879 he was appointed professor of zoology at the Faculty of Toulouse. From 1894 to 1902 he occupied the chair of comparative animal anatomy at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. In 1897 he became a member of the Académie des sciences.
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Johann Hermann
1738 - 1800 (62 years)
Johann, or Jean-Frederic, Hermann, or Herrmann, was a French physician and naturalist. In 1769 he was appointed professor of medicine at the School of Public Health of Strasbourg, then, in 1778, professor of philosophy, before going on, in 1784, to succeed Jacob Reinbold Spielmann as chair of chemistry, natural history and materia medica. In 1794 he became professor of botany and materia medica in the new School of Medicine.
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Robert Kaye Greville
1794 - 1866 (72 years)
Dr. Robert Kaye Greville FRSE FLS LLD was an English mycologist, bryologist, and botanist. He was an accomplished artist and illustrator of natural history. In addition to art and science he was interested in causes like abolitionism, capital punishment, keeping Sunday special and the temperance movement. He has a mountain in Queensland named after him.
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Gottlieb August Wilhelm Herrich-Schäffer
1799 - 1874 (75 years)
Gottlieb August Wilhelm Herrich-Schäffer was a German entomologist and physician. He was born, and died, in Regensburg. Herrich-Schäffer studied and collected particularly butterflies and moths . He was chairman of the Regensburg Botanical Society from 1861 to 1871, and was awarded an honorary citizenship of Regensburg in 1871.
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Johan Lange
1818 - 1898 (80 years)
Johan Martin Christian Lange was a prominent Danish botanist. He held the post of Librarian at the Botanical library of the University of Copenhagen from 1851 to 1858. He was Director of the Botanical Garden there from 1856 to 1876, the Reader of botany at the Danish Technical University from 1857 to 1862, and Reader of Botany at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University from 1858 to 1893, achieving full professor standing in 1892. He began editing the Flora Danica in 1858, and was its last editor. Together with Japetus Steenstrup, Johan Lange was the publisher of Flora Danica fasc. 44 .
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John Burton Cleland
1878 - 1971 (93 years)
Sir John Burton Cleland CBE was a renowned Australian naturalist, microbiologist, mycologist and ornithologist. He was Professor of Pathology at the University of Adelaide and was consulted on high-level police inquiries, such as the famous Taman Shud Case in 1948 and later. He also studied the transmission of dengue virus by the mosquito Stegomyia fasciata .
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H. Newell Martin
1848 - 1896 (48 years)
Henry Newell Martin, FRS was a British physiologist and vivisection activist. Biography He was born in Newry, County Down, the son of Henry Martin, a Congregational minister. He was educated at University College, London and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1870, took the Part I Natural Sciences in 1873, and graduated B.A. in 1874. At the University of London, where he had graduated B.Sc. in 1870, he went on to become M.B. in 1871, and D.Sc. in 1872.
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Mathias-Marie Duval
1844 - 1907 (63 years)
Mathias-Marie Duval was a French professor of anatomy and histology born in Grasse. He was the son of botanist Joseph Duval-Jouve . Biography He studied medicine in Paris, and later served as prosector in Strassburg. In 1873 he became agrégé, subsequently becoming director of the anthropological laboratory at the École des Hautes Etudes and an anatomy professor at the École Supérieur des Beaux-Arts. In 1885 he replaced Charles-Philippe Robin as professor of histology at the medical faculty in Paris. In 1892 he became a member of the Académie de Médecine. He was also a member of the Interna...
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Friedrich Christian Rosenthal
1780 - 1829 (49 years)
Friedrich Christian Rosenthal was a German anatomist who was a native of Greifswald. He earned his doctorate from the University of Jena, and later opened a medical practice in Greifswald . In Greifswald he worked closely with naturalist Karl Asmund Rudolphi , earning his habilitation in 1807 from the local university with a treatise on olfaction. In 1810 he accepted an appointment to the University of Berlin, and in 1820 returned to Greifswald as a professor of physiology and anatomy. He died in 1829 at the age of 49 due to consequences from tuberculosis.
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Alexander Eig
1894 - 1938 (44 years)
Alexander Eig was a botanist, one of the first plant researchers in Israel, head of the department of Botany at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and co-founder of the National Botanic Garden of Israel on Mount Scopus campus.
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Frans Reinhold Kjellman
1846 - 1907 (61 years)
Frans Reinhold Kjellman was a Swedish botanist who specialized in marine phycology and is known in particular for his work on Arctic algae. Kjellman became a Ph.D. and docent of botany at the University of Uppsala in 1872, taught at the Fjellstedt School, founded by Peter Fjellstedt, in Uppsala 1872–1878, and was appointed professor extraordinary at the University 1883. He was acting professor of botany 1893–1897 and briefly in 1899, before being appointed to the Borgströmian Professorship of Botany and Practical Economy in December 1899.
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Julius Rudolph Theodor Vogel
1812 - 1841 (29 years)
Julius Rudolph Theodor Vogel was a German botanist. Life He was born in Berlin, and studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Gymnasium. He learned botany from Johann Friedrich Ruthe. In 1837 he graduated Ph.D. from the University of Berlin with a dissertation on the genus Cassia. He was a privatdozent at Berlin and then from 1839 at the University of Bonn, where he took over duties after the death of Theodor Friedrich Ludwig Nees von Esenbeck. He worked particularly on Brazilian plants, and collaborated with Matthias Jakob Schleiden. In 1840 he worked on the collections of Franz Meyen who had just d...
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Paul Gustav Eduard Speiser
1877 - 1945 (68 years)
Paul Gustav Eduard Speiser was a German entomologist who specialised in Diptera. Speiser was first a physician, then a Medizinalrat, a medical adviser to a district. He worked on world Diptera, especially Nycteribiidae, and was an eminent medical entomologist.
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John H. Humphrey
1915 - 1987 (72 years)
John Herbert Humphrey CBE FRS FRCP was a British bacteriologist and immunologist. Education He was educated at Winchester School, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated from University College Hospital medical school in 1940.
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Robert Caspary
1818 - 1887 (69 years)
Johann Xaver Robert Caspary was a German botanist. Caspary was born in Königsberg. He studied theology and philosophy at the University of Königsberg and was educated in sciences at the University of Bonn. Among his influences at Bonn were zoologist Georg August Goldfuss, astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander and botanist Ludolph Christian Treviranus. Afterwards, he spent considerable time in England studying marine and freshwater algae. From 1851 he served as a lecturer at the University of Berlin, where he worked closely with Alexander Braun. In 1859 he returned to Königsberg as a ...
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Armin von Tschermak-Seysenegg
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
Armin Eduard Gustav Tschermak, Edler von Seysenegg was an Austrian physiologist. He was an elder son of the Moravia-born mineralogist Gustav Tschermak von Seysenegg. He was instrumental in helping his botanist-brother Erich von Tschermak-Seysenegg in the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of genetics. He was Professor of Physiology at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and the Institute of Physiology in Prague. He was elected member to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on 28 October 1936.
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William MacGillivray
1796 - 1852 (56 years)
William MacGillivray FRSE was a Scottish naturalist and ornithologist. Life and work MacGillivray was born in Old Aberdeen and brought up on Harris. He returned to Aberdeen where he studied Medicine at King's College, graduating MA in 1815. In Old Aberdeen he lived at 107 High Street.
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Nikolai Knipovich
1862 - 1939 (77 years)
Nikolai Mikhailovich Knipovich was a Russian and Soviet ichthyologist, marine zoologist and oceanographer, notable as the founder of fisheries research in the Russian North. Biography General Knipovich graduated from the Saint Petersburg Imperial University in 1886 and went on to defend his master's thesis "Materials for the study of Ascothoracida" in 1892. He was then elected assistant professor of the University in 1893.
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Rembert Dodoens
1517 - 1585 (68 years)
Rembert Dodoens was a Flemish physician and botanist, also known under his Latinized name Rembertus Dodonaeus. He has been called the father of botany. Life Dodoens was born Rembert van Joenckema in Mechelen, then the capital of the Spanish Netherlands in 1517. His parents were Denis van Joenckema and Ursula Roelants. The van Joenckema family and name are Frisian in origin. Its members were active in politics and jurisprudence in Friesland and some had moved in 1516 to Mechelen. His father was one of the municipal physicians in Mechelen and a private physician to Margaret of Austria, Governor of the Netherlands, in her final illness.
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Johannes Grøntved
1882 - 1956 (74 years)
Johannes Grøntved was a Danish botanist. He made investigations of flora and vegetation in Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and Estonia. He was editor of The Botany of Iceland from vol. 3 part 2.
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Hermann Müller
1850 - 1927 (77 years)
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Muriel Robertson
1883 - 1973 (90 years)
Muriel Robertson , was a Scottish protozoologist and bacteriologist at the Lister Institute, London from 1915 to 1961. She made key discoveries of the life cycle of trypanosomess. She was one of the founding members of the Society for Microbiology , along with Alexander Fleming and Marjory Stephenson.
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Jacob Fidelis Ackermann
1765 - 1815 (50 years)
Jacob Fidelis Ackermann was a German professor of anatomy and surgery. Ackermann was born in Rüdesheim am Rhein. He began his studies at Würzburg and earned his doctorate in Mainz in 1787. After extensive research travel he was promoted to private lecturer for forensic medicine in 1789. He acquired the regular professorship in botanics and later in anatomy when Samuel Thomas von Sömmering resigned his office.
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John Treadwell Nichols
1883 - 1958 (75 years)
John Treadwell Nichols was an American ichthyologist and ornithologist. Life and career Nichols was born in Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Mary Blake and John White Treadwell Nichols. In 1906 he studied vertebrate zoology at Harvard College, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts . In 1907 he joined the American Museum of Natural History as assistant in the department of mammalogy. In 1913 he founded Copeia, the official journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. In 1916 he described the long lost Bermuda petrel together with Louis Leon Arthu...
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Dukinfield Henry Scott
1854 - 1934 (80 years)
Dr Dukinfield Henry Scott FRS HFRSE LLD was a British botanist. Biography Scott was born in London on 28 November 1854, the fifth and youngest son of architect Sir George Gilbert Scott and his wife Caroline Oldrid.
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Alexander Hollaender
1898 - 1986 (88 years)
Alexander Hollaender was one of the world's leading researchers in radiation biology and in genetic mutations. In 1983 he was given the Enrico Fermi Award by the United States Department of Energy for his contributions in founding the science of radiation biology, and for his leadership in promoting "scientific exchanges" between American scientists and scientists from developing countries.
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Johann Nepomuk Czermak
1828 - 1873 (45 years)
Johann Nepomuk Czermak was an Austrian-German physiologist. Biography CZermak was born on 17 June 1828 in Prague. He studied in Prague, Vienna, Breslau and Würzburg. At Breslau he was greatly influenced by the work of physiologist Jan Evangelista Purkyně . He became a professor at Graz in 1855, and proceeded to work at several European universities, including Kraków and Leipzig . Czermak was a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Just prior to his death in 1873, he founded a physiological institute in Leipzig called the "Spectatorium". He died on 16 September 1873 in Leipzig
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Fritz Noll
1858 - 1908 (50 years)
Fritz Noll was a German botanist who made contributions in the field of plant physiology. He studied natural history and sciences at the Universities of Würzburg, Marburg and Heidelberg. In 1887 he became an assistant to Julius von Sachs at the University of Würzburg, and during the same year received his habilitation. In 1889 he was appointed etatsmäßiger professor at the agricultural academy at Poppelsdorf, as well as an associate professor at the University of Bonn. In 1907 he became a professor of botany at the University of Halle.
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Andrew Delmar Hopkins
1857 - 1948 (91 years)
Andrew Delmar Hopkins was an American entomologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though self-taught, his scientific understanding of forest entomology was exceptional. He received an honorary doctorate from West Virginia University and in 1902 he went to work for the US Department of Agriculture. He was subsequently named head of the newly created Division of Forest Insect Investigations. He became a specialist in the bark beetle family Scolytidae, especially the genus Dendroctonus, species of which are the most destructive insects in coniferous forests of North America. His taxonomic monographs on these beetles are classics.
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Clara H. Hasse
1880 - 1926 (46 years)
Clara Henriette Hasse was an American botanist whose research focused on plant pathology. She is known for identifying the cause of citrus canker, which was threatening crops in the Deep South. Biography Hasse attended the University of Michigan. While at U of M, she was appointed an assistant in botany in 1902. Hasse was a founding member of the Women's Research Club at U of M as women were not allowed in the Research Club at the time. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1903 with a PhB, she went to Washington, D.C., to take up an appointment as assistant horticulturist and botanist in the Bureau of Plant Industry at the U.S.
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Johanna Westerdijk
1883 - 1961 (78 years)
Johanna Westerdijk was a Dutch plant pathologist and the first female professor in the Netherlands. Early life Johanna Westerdijk, called "Hans" by friends, was born on 4 January 1883 in Nieuwer-Amstel, a small village south of Amsterdam, and died on 15 November 1961 at 78 years old in Baarn, Netherlands.
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Moses Kunitz
1887 - 1978 (91 years)
Moses Kunitz was a Russian-American biochemist who spent most of his career at Rockefeller University. He is best known for a series of experiments in purification and crystallization of proteins, contributing to the determination that enzymes are proteins.
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Alfred William Bennett
1833 - 1902 (69 years)
Alfred William Bennett was a British botanist and publisher. He was best known for his work on the flora of the Swiss Alps, cryptogams, and the Polygalaceae or Milkwort plant family, as well as his years in the publishing industry.
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