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
David Douglas
1799 - 1834 (35 years)
David Douglas was a Scottish botanist, best known as the namesake of the Douglas fir. He worked as a gardener, and explored the Scottish Highlands, North America, and Hawaii, where he died. Early life Douglas was born in Scone, Perthshire, the second son of John Douglas, a stonemason, and Jean Drummond. He attended Kinnoull School and upon leaving found work as an apprentice to William Beattie, head gardener at Scone Palace, the seat of the Earl of Mansfield. He spent seven years in this position, completing his apprenticeship, and then spent a winter at a college in Perth to learn more of the scientific and mathematical aspects of plant culture.
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Nikolai Severtzov
1827 - 1885 (58 years)
Nikolai Alekseevich Severtzov was an explorer and naturalist from the Russian Empire. Severtzov studied at the Moscow University and at the age of eighteen he came into contact with G. S. Karelin and took an interest in central Asia. In 1857, he joined a mission to Syr-Darya. On the expedition to the Syr Darya, he was captured by bandits and freed after a month. In 1865–68, he explored the Tian Shan mountains and Lake Issyk Kul. In 1877–78, he explored the Pamir Mountains, following a route close to the current Pamir Highway as far as Lake Yashil Kul on the Ghunt River.
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Frederick Manson Bailey
1827 - 1915 (88 years)
Frederick Manson Bailey was a botanist active in Australia, who made valuable contributions to the characterisation of the flora of Queensland. He was known by his middle name, Manson. Early life Bailey was born in London, the second son of John Bailey and his wife, née Manson. Frederick was educated at the foundation school of the Independent Church at Hackney, London. The family went to Australia in 1838 arriving at Adelaide on 22 March 1839 in the Buckinghamshire. John Bailey was appointed colonial botanist soon afterwards and was asked to form a botanic garden. John Bailey resigned in 1841, began farming, and subsequently started a plant nursery at Adelaide.
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Bernhard Siegfried Albinus
1697 - 1770 (73 years)
Bernhard Siegfried Albinus was a German-born Dutch anatomist. He served a professor of medicine at the University of Leiden like his father Bernhard Albinus . He also published a large-format artistic atlas of human anatomy, with engravings made by Jan Wandelaar.
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William Francis Ganong
1864 - 1941 (77 years)
William Francis Ganong, M.A., Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S.C., was a Canadian biologist botanist, historian and cartographer. His botany career was spent mainly as a professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. In his private life he contributed to the historical and geographical understanding of his native New Brunswick.
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Otto Lubarsch
1860 - 1933 (73 years)
Otto Lubarsch was a German pathologist and academic who was a native of Berlin. Among other contributions to medical knowledge, Lubarsch provided the first detailed description of carcinoid tumors.
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Yang Zhongjian
1897 - 1979 (82 years)
Yang Zhongjian, also Yang Chung-chien , courtesy name Keqiang , also known as C.C. Young, was a Chinese paleontologist and zoologist. He was one of China's foremost vertebrate paleontologists. He has been called the "Father of Chinese Vertebrate Paleontology".
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Carl Jakob Sundevall
1801 - 1875 (74 years)
Carl Jakob Sundevall was a Swedish zoologist. Sundevall studied at Lund University, where he received a Ph.D. in 1823. After traveling to East Asia, he studied medicine, graduating as a Doctor of Medicine in 1830.
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Arthur Harden
1865 - 1940 (75 years)
Sir Arthur Harden, FRS was a British biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1929 with Hans Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin for their investigations into the fermentation of sugar and fermentative enzymes. He was a founding member of the Biochemical Society and editor of its journal for 25 years.
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Nikolai Bernstein
1896 - 1966 (70 years)
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bernstein was a Soviet neurophysiologist who has pioneered motion-tracking devices and formal processing of information obtained from the use of these devices. He was also one of first psychologists to suggest that behaviour is generative, constructive and not reactive. He was born and died in Moscow.
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Max Askanazy
1865 - 1940 (75 years)
Max Askanazy was a German-Swiss pathologist. In 1890 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Königsberg, where he worked for several years in its pathological institute. In 1903 he obtained the title of professor. In 1905 he succeeded Friedrich Wilhelm Zahn , as professor of general pathology at the University of Geneva, a position he maintained until 1939.
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William Aiton
1731 - 1793 (62 years)
William Aiton was a Scottish botanist. Aiton was born near Hamilton. Having been regularly trained to the profession of a gardener, he travelled to London in 1754, and became assistant to Philip Miller, then superintendent of the Chelsea Physic Garden. In 1759 he was appointed director of the newly established botanical garden at Kew, where he remained until his death. He effected many improvements at the gardens, and in 1789 he published Hortus Kewensis, a catalogue of the plants cultivated there. He is buried at nearby St. Anne's Church, Kew.
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Hans Fruhstorfer
1866 - 1922 (56 years)
Hans Fruhstorfer was a German explorer, insect trader and entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera. He collected and described new species of exotic butterflies, especially in Adalbert Seitz's Macrolepidoptera of the World. He is best known for his work on the butterflies of Java.
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John Kunkel Small
1869 - 1938 (69 years)
John Kunkel Small was an American botanist. He studied plants in the southeast and wrote a book about the deterioration of habitats in Florida. Born on January 31, 1869, in Harrisburg Pennsylvania, Kunkel studied botany at Franklin & Marshall College and Columbia University. He was the first Curator of Museums at The New York Botanical Garden, a post in which he served from 1898 until 1906. From 1906 to 1934 he was Head Curator and then from 1934 until his death he was Chief Research Associate and Curator. Small's doctoral dissertation, published as Flora of the Southeastern United States in 1903, and revised in 1913 and 1933, remains the best floristic reference for much of the South.
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Barton Warren Evermann
1853 - 1932 (79 years)
Barton Warren Evermann was an American ichthyologist. Early life and education Evermann was born in Monroe County, Iowa in 1853. His family moved to Indiana while he was still a child and it was there that he grew up, completed his education, and married. Evermann graduated from Indiana University in 1886.
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Arthur Henry Reginald Buller
1874 - 1944 (70 years)
Arthur Henry Reginald Buller, was a British-Canadian mycologist. He is mainly known as a researcher of fungi and wheat rust. Academic career Born in Moseley, Birmingham, England, he was educated at Queen's College, Taunton. He then studied at Mason College, which later became the University of Birmingham, , the University of Leipzig , and the University of Munich. He was awarded a D.Sc. by the University of Birmingham. He worked briefly for the Naples Zoological Station. From 1901 to 1904, he was a lecturer in Botany at the University of Birmingham. He came to Canada in 1904, founded the B...
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Louis Boutan
1859 - 1934 (75 years)
Louis Marie-Auguste Boutan was a French biologist and photographer. He was a pioneer in the field of underwater photography. Biography The son of , he was born in Versailles and studied biology and natural history at the University of Paris. In 1880, he was named deputy head assigned to organize the French exhibit at the Melbourne International Exhibition . He stayed in Australia for 18 months, travelling the continent and identifying new animal species. In 1886, Boutan was named maître de conférences at the University of Lille. In the same year, he learned how to dive. In 1893, he was named professor at the Laboratoire Arago.
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Göte Turesson
1892 - 1970 (78 years)
Göte Wilhelm Turesson was a Swedish evolutionary botanist who made significant contributions to ecological genetics, and coined the terms ecotype and agamospecies. He conducted extensive work to demonstrate that there is a genetic basis to the differentiation of plant populations. This work stood in sharp contrast to most researchers at the time, who believed that the differentiation of plant populations was due to phenotypic plasticity. Further, Turesson came to the conclusion that differentiation of plant populations was largely driven by natural selection. His work on locally adapted pl...
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Leo Kanner
1894 - 1981 (87 years)
Leo Kanner was an Austrian-American psychiatrist, physician, and social activist best known for his work related to infantile autism. Before working at the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Kanner practiced as a physician in Germany and South Dakota. In 1943, Kanner published his landmark paper Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact, describing 11 children who displayed "a powerful desire for aloneness" and "an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness." He named their condition "early infantile autism". Kanner was in charge of developing the first child psy...
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Émile Blanchard
1819 - 1900 (81 years)
Charles Émile Blanchard was a French zoologist and entomologist. Career Blanchard was born in Paris. His father was an artist and naturalist and Émile began natural history very early in life. When he was 14 years old, Jean Victoire Audouin , allowed him access to the laboratory of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. In 1838, he became a technician or préparateur in this then, as now, famous institution. In 1841, he became assistant-naturalist.
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William Thompson Sedgwick
1855 - 1921 (66 years)
William Thompson Sedgwick was a teacher, epidemiologist, bacteriologist, and a key figure in shaping public health in the United States. He was president of many scientific and professional organizations during his lifetime, including president of the American Public Health Association in 1915. He was one of three founders of the joint MIT-Harvard School of Public Health in 1913.
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Addison Emery Verrill
1839 - 1926 (87 years)
Addison Emery Verrill was an American invertebrate zoologist, museum curator and university professor. Life Verrill was born on February 9, 1839, in Greenwood, Maine, the son of George Washington Verrill and Lucy Verrill. As a boy he showed an early interest in natural history, building collections of rocks and minerals, plants, shells, insects and other animals. When he moved with his family to Norway, Maine, at age fourteen he attended secondary school at the Norway Liberal Institute.
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Hans von Berlepsch
1850 - 1915 (65 years)
Count Hans Hermann Carl Ludwig von Berlepsch was a German ornithologist. Berlepsch studied zoology at the University of Halle. He used his inherited wealth to sponsor bird collectors in South America, including Jan Kalinowski and Hermann von Ihering. His collection of 55,000 birds was sold to the Senckenberg Museum at Frankfurt on Main after his death.
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Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin
1727 - 1817 (90 years)
Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin was a scientist who studied medicine, chemistry and botany. Biography Born in Leiden in the Netherlands, he studied medicine at Leiden University, then moved first to Paris and afterward to Vienna. In 1752, he studied under Gerard van Swieten in Vienna.
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Petrus Camper
1722 - 1789 (67 years)
Petrus Camper FRS , was a Dutch physician, anatomist, physiologist, midwife, zoologist, anthropologist, palaeontologist and a naturalist in the Age of Enlightenment. He was one of the first to take an interest in comparative anatomy, palaeontology, and the facial angle. He was among the first to mark out an "anthropology," which he distinguished from natural history. He studied the orangutan, the Javan rhinoceros, and the skull of a mosasaur, which he believed was a whale.
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Jean Théodore Delacour
1890 - 1985 (95 years)
Jean Théodore Delacour was a French ornithologist and aviculturist. He later became American. He was renowned for not only discovering but also rearing some of the rarest birds in the world. He established very successful aviaries twice in his life, stocked with birds from around the world, including those that he obtained on expeditions to Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. His first aviary in Villers-Bretonneux was destroyed in World War One. The second one that he established at Clères was destroyed in World War Two. He moved to the United States of America where he worked on avian systematics and was one of the founders of the International Committee for Bird Protection .
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Édouard Chatton
1883 - 1947 (64 years)
Édouard Chatton was a French biologist who first characterized the distinction between the prokaryotic and eukaryotic cellular types. "Pansporella perplexa. Reflections on the Biology and Phylogeny of the Protozoa" [Pansporella perplexa, Amoebien a spores protegees parasite des Daphnies. Réflexions sur la biologie et la phylogénie des Protozoaires. Annales des Sciences Naturelles 10 8: 5-84. Paris, 1925]ref name=sapp2005></ref>
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Yuly Shokalsky
1856 - 1940 (84 years)
Yuly Mikhailovich Shokalsky was a Russian Empire and Soviet oceanographer, cartographer, and geographer. Career A grandson of Anna Kern, Pushkin's celebrated mistress, Shokalsky graduated from the Naval Academy in 1880 and made a career in the Imperial Russian Navy, helping establish the Sevastopol Marine Observatory and rising to the rank of Lieutenant-General in 1912. At the same time, he developed interest in limnology and meteorology and became the most prolific Russian author on the subjects. In the Marine Miscellanies alone, he published some 300 articles.
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Paul Fildes
1882 - 1971 (89 years)
Sir Paul Gordon Fildes was a British pathologist and microbiologist who worked on the development of chemical-biological weaponry at Porton Down during the Second World War. Biography Early life Fildes was born in Kensington, London, the son of the artist Sir Luke Fildes and great grandson of reformist Mary Fildes, Paul attended Winchester School and then studied surgery at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained an MB BCh degree.
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Leopoldo Marco Antonio Caldani
1725 - 1813 (88 years)
Leopoldo Marco Antonio Caldani was an Italian anatomist and physiologist. Caldani was born in Bologna, Italy. He studied medicine in Bologna, receiving his degree in 1750, and became a professor of practical medicine in 1755. Caldani left to become professor of theoretical medicine at Padua, and in 1771 became professor of anatomy, retiring in 1805.
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Paul Uhlenhuth
1870 - 1957 (87 years)
Paul Theodor Uhlenhuth was a German bacteriologist and immunologist, and Professor at the University of Strasbourg , at the University of Marburg and at the University of Freiburg . He was a rector of the University of Freiburg from 1928–1929. After his retirement in 1936, he led his own research institute in Freiburg, known as the State Research Laboratory, until his death in 1957.
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Alexander Wetmore
1886 - 1978 (92 years)
Frank Alexander Wetmore was an American ornithologist and avian paleontologist. He was the sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He was also an elected member of both the American Philosophical Society and the United States National Academy of Sciences.
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John Roxborough Norman
1898 - 1944 (46 years)
John Roxborough Norman was an English ichthyologist. He started as a clerk in a bank. His lifetime affliction with rheumatic fever began during his military service during the First World War. He entered the British Museum in 1921 where he worked for Charles Tate Regan . From 1939 to 1944, he was in charge of the Natural History Museum at Tring as the Curator of Zoology. Norman was the author of, among others, A History of Fishes and A Draft Synopsis of the Orders, Families and Genera of Recent Fishes . He was considered closer to Albert Günther than to Regan.
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Paul C. Bucy
#16485
Nicolas Steno
1638 - 1686 (48 years)
Niels Steensen was a Danish scientist, a pioneer in both anatomy and geology who became a Catholic bishop in his later years. Steensen was trained in the classical texts on science; however, by 1659 he seriously questioned accepted knowledge of the natural world. Importantly he questioned explanations for tear production, the idea that fossils grew in the ground and explanations of rock formation. His investigations and his subsequent conclusions on fossils and rock formation have led scholars to consider him one of the founders of modern stratigraphy and modern geology. The importance of Ste...
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Julius Victor Carus
1823 - 1903 (80 years)
Julius Victor Carus was a German zoologist, comparative anatomist and entomologist. Career Carus was born in Leipzig. He served as curator of the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Oxford University from 1849 to 1851, and as professor of comparative anatomy and director of the Zoological Museum at the University of Leipzig in 1853.
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Justus Christian Loder
1753 - 1832 (79 years)
Justus Ferdinand Christian Loder was a German anatomist and surgeon who was a native of Riga. Biography In 1777 Loder earned his medical doctorate at the University of Göttingen, and the following year was appointed professor of surgery and anatomy at the University of Jena, where he practiced medicine for the next 25 years. At Jena he was responsible for the establishment of an anatomical theatre and an Accouchierhaus . In 1780-81, at the expense of the Duke of Weimar, he took a scientific journey to France, England and Holland, a trip in which he made the acquaintance of several well-known ...
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Hans Chiari
1851 - 1916 (65 years)
Hans Chiari was a pathologist from Austria-Hungary, who was a native of Vienna. He was the son of gynecologist Johann Baptist Chiari , and brother to rhinolaryngologist Ottokar Chiari . Biography Chiari studied medicine in Vienna, where he was an assistant to Karl Freiherr von Rokitansky and Richard Ladislaus Heschl . In 1878 he received his habilitation in pathological anatomy, and within a few years became an associate professor at the University of Prague. At Prague he was also superintendent of the pathological-anatomical museum. In 1906 he relocated to the University of Strasbourg as a ...
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A. S. Hitchcock
1865 - 1935 (70 years)
Albert Spear Hitchcock was an American botanist and agrostologist. Hitchcock graduated from the Iowa Agricultural College with bachelor's degree in 1884 and M.S. in 1886. From 1892 to 1901 he was a professor of botany at the Kansas State Agricultural College. Hitchcock joined the USDA in 1901 as Assistant Agrostologist under Frank Lamson-Scribner. In 1905 he was put in charge of the grass herbarium and became Systematic Agrostologist. After 1928, he held the title of Principal Biologist in charge of Systematic Agrostology of the Department of Agriculture and kept that title until his death in 1935.
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William Kirby
1759 - 1850 (91 years)
William Kirby was an English entomologist, an original member of the Linnean Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society, as well as a country rector, so that he was an eminent example of the "parson-naturalist". The four-volume Introduction to Entomology, co-written with William Spence, was widely influential.
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Rudolf Kner
1810 - 1869 (59 years)
Rudolf Ignaz Kner was an Austrian geologist, paleontologist, zoologist and ichthyologist. He also wrote some poems which were published by his brother-in-law K.A. Kaltenbrunner. Biography Kner was born in Linz where his father Johann Evangelist Georg Kner was a tax officer. His mother Barbara , daughter of forester Johann von Adlersburg was earlier married to apothecary Felix Gulielmo until his death. Barbara had a daughter Marie Gulielmo from her earlier marriage before having Rudolf and his sister Pauline. Pauline Anna Barbara Kner married the Austrian poet Karl Adam Kaltenbrunner in 1834.
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Ernst Freese
1926 - 1990 (64 years)
Dr. Ernst Freese was a molecular biologist who worked on the mechanism of mutations in DNA. From 1962 until his death he was Chief of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the National Institutes of Health . Ernst Freese's scientific career started in theoretical particle physics and later moved to molecular biology where he contributed to early genetics research.
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Yves Delage
1854 - 1920 (66 years)
Yves Delage was a French zoologist known for his work into invertebrate physiology and anatomy. He also discovered the function of the semicircular canals in the inner ear. He is also famous for noting and preparing a speech on the Turin Shroud, arguing in favour of its authenticity. Delage estimated the probability that the image on the shroud was not caused by the body of Jesus Christ as 1 in 10 billion.
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Charles Flahault
1852 - 1935 (83 years)
Charles Henri Marie Flahault was a French botanist, among the early pioneers of phytogeography, phytosociology, and forest ecology. The word relevé for a plant community sample is his invention. Early life and education Flahault was born in Bailleul, Nord, and received his Baccalauréat de Lettres at Douai in 1872, after which he became a gardener at the Jardin des Plantes de Paris. He was noticed by Joseph Decaisne , who gave him private lessons, after which he entered the Sorbonne in 1874 to study in the laboratory of Philippe Van Tieghem , obtaining his doctoral degree in biology in 1878. H...
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Alfred Mirsky
1900 - 1974 (74 years)
Alfred Ezra Mirsky was an American pioneer in molecular biology. Mirsky graduated from Harvard College in 1922, after which he studied for two years at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons until 1924 when he moved to the University of Cambridge on a US National Research Council fellowship for the academic year 1924–1925. He received his PhD from Cambridge in 1926, with a dissertation under Lawrence J. Henderson on the Haemoglobin molecule, completing work begun under Joseph Barcroft.
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Nathan Zuntz
1847 - 1920 (73 years)
Nathan Zuntz was a German physiologist born in Bonn. He was a pioneer of modern altitude physiology and aviation medicine. Academic career He studied medicine at the University of Bonn, where he was an assistant to Max Schultze. In 1868 he earned his doctorate, and following a study trip to Berlin, returned to Bonn in 1870 as an assistant to physiologist Eduard Pflüger. The following year he became a lecturer at the University of Bonn, and in 1872 was an honorary professor of physiology at the Landwirtschaftliche Akademie at Poppelsdorf. From 1881 until his retirement in 1919, he was a professor at the Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule Berlin in Berlin.
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Eduard Fenzl
1808 - 1879 (71 years)
Eduard Fenzl was an Austrian botanist. Life and contributions An obituary notes "[he] was Professor of Botany and Director of the Imperial Botanical Cabinet, a member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, and Vice-President of the Vienna Horticultural Society."
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Anton Ghon
1866 - 1936 (70 years)
Anton Ghon was an Austrian pathologist and bacteriologist. He is best known for his research on tuberculosis . Biography Ghon was born on January 1, 1866, in Villach. From 1884 to 1890, Ghon studied medicine at the university in Graz. In 1890 he volunteered at the dermatologic clinic in Vienna. In 1892, he became an aspirant to the pathologic-anatomic division at Krankenanstalt Rudolfstiftung . In 1893, he worked as demonstrator to the chair of pathological histology and bacteriology and as of 1894 as assistant of Anton Weichselbaum at the pathological-anatomical institute at the University ...
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Josef August Schultes
1773 - 1831 (58 years)
Josef August Schultes was an Austrian botanist and professor from Vienna. Together with Johann Jacob Roemer , he published the 16th edition of Linnaeus' Systema Vegetabilium. In 1821, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was the father of Julius Hermann Schultes .
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Ansel Adams
1902 - 1984 (82 years)
Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed a system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a technical understanding of how the tonal range of an image is the result of choices made in exposure, negative development, and printing.
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