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,
#16551
Harry Hoogstraal
1917 - 1986 (69 years)
Harry Hoogstraal was an American entomologist and parasitologist. He was described as "the greatest authority on ticks and tickborne diseases who ever lived." The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene's Harry Hoogstraal Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Entomology honors his contributions to science.
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Domenico Viviani
1772 - 1840 (68 years)
Domenico Viviani was an Italian botanist and naturalist. In 1803, he was named professor of botany at the University of Genoa, where he is credited with the founding of its botanical garden. He is known for his natural history studies of the Ligurian region as well as botanical investigations of flora native to other areas of the Italian mainland, Sardinia, Corsica, and Libya.
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Frederik Schübeler
1815 - 1892 (77 years)
Frederik Christian "Fritz" Schübeler was a Norwegian botanist. He was born in Fredriksstad as a son of Gregers Frederik Schübeler and Louise Christine Engstrøm . He was married twice. An adopted daughter of his, Ingeborg Strengberg , married botanical gardener Carl Theodor Schulz.
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George Lawson
1827 - 1895 (68 years)
George Lawson was a Scottish-Canadian botanist who is considered the "father of Canadian botany". Born in Scotland, in 1858, he was appointed the Professor of Chemistry and Natural History at Queen's University. He helped to create one of Canada's first botanical gardens.
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Amico Bignami
#16556
Käthe Hoffmann
1883 - Present (143 years)
Käthe Hoffmann was a German botanist who described many plant species in New Guinea and South East Asia including Annesijoa novoguineensis. She was a professor at Breslau, German Empire, and made a significant contribution to botany. In one study, she was found to have co-authored or authored 354 land plant species, the sixth-highest number authored by any female scientist. , Plants of the World Online lists 439 accepted genera and species which include Käthe Hoffmann in the authority, in some capacity.
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Melchior Neumayr
1845 - 1890 (45 years)
Melchior Neumayr was an palaeontologist from Austria-Hungary and the son of Max von Neumayr, a Bavarian Minister of State. He was educated at the University of Munich, and completed his studies at Heidelberg, where he graduated with a Ph.D. After some experience in field-geology under KW von Gümbel, he joined the Austrian geological survey in 1868. Four years later he returned to Heidelberg, but in 1873 he was appointed professor of palaeontology in Vienna, and occupied this post until his death.
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Augusta Vera Duthie
1881 - 1963 (82 years)
Augusta Vera Duthie was a South African botanist who studied the plants of the Western Cape and was a popular teacher who lectured on cryptogamic botany. She was the first university lecturer in botany who was entirely educated in South Africa.
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Boris Kozo-Polyansky
1890 - 1957 (67 years)
Boris Mikhailovich Kozo-Polyansky was a Soviet and Russian botanist and evolutionary biologist, best known for his seminal work, Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution, which was the first work to place the theory of symbiogenesis into a Darwinian evolutionary context, as well as one of the first to redefine cell theory.
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David H. Valentine
1912 - 1987 (75 years)
David Henriques Valentine was a British botanist and plant taxonomist. Early career Valentine was born in Higher Broughton, Salford, 16 February 1912, elder child of Emmanuel Henriques Valentine and his wife Dora Deborah Valentine née Besso. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and then won a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge, where he gained a first class degree in Natural Sciences. His doctorate was in plant physiology after which, in 1936, his interests shifted to taxonomy and he was appointed Curator of the Herbarium at the Botany School of the university. In 1938 he became a Fellow of St.
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Ernst Vanhöffen
1858 - 1918 (60 years)
Ernst Vanhöffen was a German zoologist. He studied geology, botany and zoology at the universities of Berlin and Königsberg, graduating in 1888 with the thesis Untersuchungen über semaeostome und rhizostome Medusen. In 1889–90 he conducted research of jellyfish at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples.
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Dwight Sanderson
1878 - 1944 (66 years)
Ezra Dwight Sanderson was an American entomologist and sociologist who worked in the US Department of Agriculture on pest management in cotton before becoming a professor of sociology. He published two textbooks in entomology and wrote several books on rural sociology.
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Erna Walter
1893 - 1992 (99 years)
Erna Walter was a German botanist, ecologist, botanical collector and bryologist. Life and work The daughter of botanist Heinrich Schenck, Erna studied botany, physics and chemistry in Darmstadt and Heidelberg. She received her doctorate in 1918 under the direction of botanist Georg Albrecht Klebs at the University of Heidelberg. Her dissertation was titled: Bacteriocine von Clostridium perfringens. Walter then worked as a scientific assistant at the Botanical Institute of the University of Heidelberg with Ludwig Jost and as an intern at the Biological Reich Institute in Berlin-Dahlem. She wa...
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Alick Isaacs
1921 - 1967 (46 years)
Alick Isaacs FRS was a Scottish virologist. Background and early life Isaacs's Jewish paternal grandparents came from Lithuania to escape oppression, and took the surname Isaacs. Alick's father Louis was born in 1890. His parents moved to Wigan and then to the Gorbals area of Glasgow where Isaacs was born.
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Jean-marie R. Besson
#16566
Cai Qiao
1897 - 1990 (93 years)
Cai Qiao or Chiao Tsai was a Chinese physiologist and physician. Cai is famous for his discovery in 1920s, the ventral tegmental area, which also known as the ventral tegmental area of Tsai. He was elected as a member of Academia Sinica in 1948, also a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955.
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Hector Frederik Estrup Jungersen
1854 - 1917 (63 years)
Hector Frederik Estrup Jungersen was a Danish marine zoologist born in Dejbjerg . In 1877 he obtained his degree in zoology, and in 1889 his doctorate of sciences. From 1879 he taught classes at the Metropolitanskolen in Copenhagen, where he served as an assistant professor from 1882 to 1899. During this time period he was also a lecturer at the nearby Polytekniske Læreanstalt . In 1899 he succeeded Christian Frederik Lütken as professor of zoology and manager of the zoological museum at the University of Copenhagen. In 1912/13 he served as university rector.
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Bogumił Pawłowski
1898 - 1971 (73 years)
Bogumil Pawlowski was a Polish botanist, a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, professor at the Jagiellonian University, and director of the Institute of Botany of the Academy of Sciences in Kraków.
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Charles Kerremans
1847 - 1915 (68 years)
Charles Kerremans was a Belgian entomologist who specialised in Coleoptera, especially Buprestidae and Cicindelidae. He was a Member of the Société entomologique de France. Publications Partial list.1893 Les Chrysobothrines d'Afrique Annales de la Société Entomologique de Belgique 37:232-260.1896 Julodis atkinsoni. A new species of Beetle Indian Museum Notes 4:48-49.1898 Descriptions de Buprestides nouveaux de Madagascar 'Bulletin de la Société Entomologique de France 1898:78-84.1903 Coleoptera: Buprestidae.In: Wytsman P. Genera Insectorum XII.V. Verteneuil & L. Desmet, Bruxelles, 338 pp. & 4 pl.1904 Faune Entomologique de l'Afrique Tropicale.
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Christoph Theodor Aeby
1835 - 1885 (50 years)
Christoph Theodor Aeby was a Swiss anatomist, anthropologist, and academic. His main scientific interest comparative anatomy and his studies were said to be facilitated by a large collection of bones, which he assembled in Bern. He is particularly noted for his work on the bronchial tree, which was published as a monograph in 1880. Through his work, a term in anthropology was named after him - the "Aeby's plane", which pertains to the plane through the nasion and brasion.
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Magnus Blix
1849 - 1904 (55 years)
Magnus Gustaf Blix was a Swedish physiologist born in the parish Säbrå, presently located in Härnösand Municipality. He is the grandfather of UN weapons inspector Hans Blix. During his career he was a professor at the Universities of Uppsala and Lund. Blix was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1892.
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Harald Kylin
1879 - 1949 (70 years)
Johan Harald Kylin was a Swedish botanist specializing in phycology and a professor at Lund University. He was also editor of the Botaniska Notiser, a Swedish scientific periodical from 1922 to 1928.
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Bing Zhi
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Bing Zhi , was a Chinese zoologist of Manchu ancestry, considered the founder of China's neontology. He was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Academia Sinica. He was a delegate to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd National People's Congress.
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Anthony Todd Thomson
1778 - 1849 (71 years)
Anthony Todd Thomson was a Scottish doctor and pioneer of dermatology. Life Anthony Todd Thomson was the younger son of Alexander Thomson and was born in Edinburgh, where his parents were staying temporarily, on 7 January 1778. His father was postmaster-general and a member of the council of the Province of Georgia, and collector of customs for the town of Savannah. Anthony returned to America with his parents soon after Anthony Todd, postmaster of Edinburgh, had stood sponsor to him as his godson; but when peace was declared after the American War of Independence, his father, in common with ...
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Ethel Irene McLennan
1891 - 1983 (92 years)
Ethel Irene McLennan was an Australian botanist, mycologist and educator. Personal life and early career The daughter of George McLennan and Eleanor Tucker, she was born in Williamstown, Victoria and was educated at the Tintern Church of England Girls' Grammar School in Hawthorn. In 1914, she received a BSc from the University of Melbourne. From 1915 to 1931, she was a demonstrator and botany lecturer at the university. Her main areas of interest were mycology and plant-fungal relationships. However, she was also one of the illustrators of The Flora of the Northern Territories .
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Wilhelm Dunker
1809 - 1885 (76 years)
Wilhelm Dunker, full name Wilhelm Bernhard Rudolph Hadrian Dunker was a German geologist, paleontologist and zoologist . Wilhelm Dunker studied mining and metallurgical engineering in Göttingen and worked at first as a trainee with the local mining authority. Soon thereafter he was appointed a teacher of mineralogical sciences at the poly-technical school in Kassel. In 1854 he was appointed professor at the University of Marburg, at which he taught up to his death. Dunker was one of the most important malacologists of his time. He had a very extensive private collection of snails and shells, which he constantly increased by exchange with other collectors .
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Humphry Sibthorp
1713 - 1797 (84 years)
Humphry Waldo Sibthorp was a British botanist. He was a younger son of John Sibthorpe, MP for Lincoln and Mary Browne, daughter of Humphrey Browne of Lincoln. After the death of Johann Jacob Dillenius , he became the Sherardian Professor of Botany at the University of Oxford from 1747 to 1783. He is known for having taught one course for 37 years. He began the catalogue of the plants of the botanical garden of the university, Catalogus Plantarum Horti Botanici Oxoniensis.
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Winifred Smith
1858 - 1925 (67 years)
Winifred Smith was an English botanist and educationist. She became a lecturer in the botany department at University College, London and took a leading role in supporting women students. First forty years She was born in Mortlake, Surrey on 5 November 1858 to Fanny and James Smith, who owned and ran a building business. Some of Smith's education was at Queen's College, London, a pioneering school for girls aged from 12 to 20. She then "devoted" herself to teaching until she began studying at University College in 1899. In the late 1870s her family experienced changes: her father went bankrup...
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Leslie Richard Foulds
#16580
William Bywater Grove
1848 - 1938 (90 years)
William Bywater Grove , was an English biologist, in particular a botanist and microbiologist. He is remembered in particular as a mycologist. He died in 1938 on the sixth of January when he was 89. Early life and teaching career He was born in Birmingham, England. From 1887 to 1900 he was headmaster of the St Edmunds High School for boys, Birmingham. One of the pupils at that school during that period was Augustus Daniel Imms, a prominent entomologist. From 1905 to 1927 Grove lectured in botany at Birmingham Municipal Technical School.
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Jan Sokolowski
1899 - 1982 (83 years)
Jan Bogumił Sokołowski was a Polish zoologist who worked as a professor at the University of Poznan who was a specialist in ornithology and studied the birds of Poland and made efforts for their conservation. He was also a talented artist and a writer of popular articles which included his own illustrations.
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Charles Henry Turner
1867 - 1923 (56 years)
Charles Henry Turner was an American zoologist, entomologist, educator, and comparative psychologist, known for his studies on the behavior of insects, particularly bees and ants. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Turner was the first African American to receive a graduate degree at the University of Cincinnati and most likely the first African American to earn a PhD from the University of Chicago. He spent most of his career as a high school teacher in Sumner High School in St. Louis. Turner was one of the first scientists to systematically examine the question of whether animals display complex cognition, studying arthropods such as spiders and bees.
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Fritz Frech
1861 - 1917 (56 years)
Fritz Daniel Frech was a German geologist and paleontologist. Frech was born in Berlin. He studied natural sciences at the universities of Leipzig, Bonn and Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1882 with a thesis on the coral fauna of the Late Devonian period in Germany. In 1887 he obtained his habilitation from the University of Halle, and in 1897 was appointed a full professor of geology and paleontology at the University of Breslau. In 1912 he was named vice-president of the newly formed Paläontologischen Gesellschaft. During World War I, he died in Aleppo while serving as a senior geologist...
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August Dehnel
1903 - 1962 (59 years)
August Gustaw Dehnel s. Michała was a Polish zoologist, Ph.D. , professor. Until 1949 he signed his popular science and embryology works with the name Gustaw Dehnel. Dehnel was born in Warsaw, the son of Maria née Sliwicka and physician Michael Dehnel. After school he was conscripted and served in Upper Silesia for which he received a medal of valour. He became a student of Jan Korczak Tur in the Institute of Comparative Anatomy from 1922. He obtained his doctorate in 1926 and became a senior assistant. He took an interest in teratological monstrosities in Emys orbicularis and later studied avian embryology.
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Pierre Fauvel
1866 - 1958 (92 years)
Pierre Louis André Fauvel was a French zoologist, who specialized in the study of polychaetes. He worked as a préparateur of zoology at the faculty of sciences in Caen, and in 1897 received his doctorate at the Sorbonne with a thesis on Ampharetidae. During the same year, he became a professor of zoology at the Université Catholique de l'Ouest in Angers, where he remained until his retirement in 1951.
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M. E. Jr. Conrad
#16587
Marcantonio della Torre
1481 - 1511 (30 years)
Marcantonio della Torre was a Renaissance Professor of Anatomy who lectured at the University of Pavia and at the University of Padua. It is believed that della Torre and Leonardo da Vinci, who studied the human anatomy by dissecting corpses, were intending to publish a book, but this did not eventuate as della Torre's life was cut short by plague in 1511. By this time Leonardo had made over 750 detailed anatomical drawings with annotations. Both Giorgio Vasari and Paolo Giovio claim that della Torre had written anatomical texts, but none are known to have survived to the modern age.
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Boris Keller
1874 - 1945 (71 years)
Boris Aleksandrovich Keller was a Russian and Soviet biologist and a pioneer of plant ecology in the Soviet Union. Specializing in the vegetational ecology of the semi-arid steppe regions, he introduced the idea of vegetation complexes which are now termed as synusia in plant ecology. He served as the first director of the Komarov Botanical Institute.
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Bernhard von Cotta
1808 - 1879 (71 years)
Carl Bernhard von Cotta, known as Bernhard von Cotta , was a German geologist. Life He was born in a forester's lodge at Kleine Zillbach, Meiningen, near Eisenach, the son of Heinrich von Cotta, founder of the Tharandt Forestry Academy near Dresden. He was educated first at the Tharnadt Academcy, then at the Bergakademie Freiberg and the University of Heidelberg. Botany at first attracted him and he was one of the earliest to use the microscope in determining the structure of fossil plants. Later on he gave his attention to geology, to the study of ore-deposits, of rockss and metamorphism. He studied deposits of minerals in the Austrian Alps, Hungary, and Romania.
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Seitarō Gotō
1867 - 1935 (68 years)
Seitarō Gotō was a Japanese scientist, known for his works on the Monogenea, a class of parasitic flatworms which are ectoparasites of fishes. He also worked on other invertebrates, such as Coelenterates and Echinoderms.
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Lucio Guido Costa
#16592
Thomas Gordon Thompson
1888 - 1961 (73 years)
Thomas Gordon Thompson was an American chemist and oceanographer. Early life and education Thompson was born on November 28, 1888, at Rose Bank, Staten Island, New York. He received his bachelor's degree from Clark University at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1914. With the support of a scholarship from the British Iron and Steel Institute, he then began graduate studies at the University of Washington, in Seattle, Washington. He was admitted to a doctorate in chemistry from this institution in 1918.
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Franz Bruno Hofmann
1869 - 1926 (57 years)
Franz Bruno Hofmann was an Austrian-German physiologist. In 1894 he received his medical doctorate from the German University in Prague, and for several years worked as an assistant to physiologist Ewald Hering, first in Prague , then afterwards at the University of Leipzig . At Leipzig, with ophthalmologist Alfred Bielschowsky, he conducted studies on fusion and cyclodeviation in paresis of the superior oblique muscle as well as on congenital hyperfunction of the superior oblique muscle.
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George Stuart Carter
1893 - 1969 (76 years)
Dr George Stuart Carter FRSE FLS FZS was a leading British zoologist and zoological author. Life He was born on 15 September 1893, the son of Rev G C Carter and Hilda E Keane. He studied at Marlborough College and then was awarded a place at Cambridge University, where he continued also at postgraduate level, gaining a PhD in Zoology. His studies were interrupted by the First World War: he served in the 6th Leicestershire Regiment from 1914-1917 and then as a Sound Ranger in the Royal Engineers 1917 to 1919.
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Carl Diener
1862 - 1928 (66 years)
Carl Diener was an Austrian geographer, geologist and paleontologist. Biography In 1883 he received his doctorate from the University of Vienna, where his instructors included Eduard Suess and Melchior Neumayr. In 1893 he changed his venia legendi from geography to geology, a subject that he became an associate professor of in 1897. In 1906 he was named a full professor of paleontology at the University of Vienna.
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Mark Shlomchik
Mark Jay Shlomchik is an American immunologist currently UPMC Endowed Professor and chair at University of Pittsburgh.
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Lockhart Muirhead
1765 - 1829 (64 years)
Lockhart Muirhead was a Scottish librarian, museum-keeper and academic. He was Regius Professor of Zoology at Glasgow University, from 1807. Life Muirhead travelled in Europe shortly before the French Revolution, and subsequently wrote on both French and Italian topics. He contributed to the Monthly Review and Edinburgh Review. He was librarian of Glasgow University in the period 1795 to 1823.
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Roberto de Visiani
1800 - 1878 (78 years)
Roberto de Visiani was a Dalmatian Italian botanist, naturalist and scholar. He is seen as one of the fathers of modern botany in Italy. Early career He was the son of a physician and a close friend of his fellow citizen Niccolò Tommaseo. After finishing his studies in his hometown and the seminary in Split, he entered in 1817 the University of Padua, from which he graduated in Medicine in 1822.
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W. Frank Blair
1912 - 1984 (72 years)
William Franklin Blair was a zoologist and president of the Ecological Society of America. Life Blair was born in Dayton, Texas. He was the eldest of five children of Percy Franklin and Mona Clyde Blair. In 1916, his family moved tro Oklahoma, where Blair graduated from Tulsa Central High School in 1930, then from the University of Tulsa in 1934 with a degree in zoology. He married Fern Antell, a librarian at the university, on October 25, 1933.
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Frederick William Gamble
1869 - 1926 (57 years)
Frederick William Gamble was a zoologist and author. After secondary education at Manchester Grammar School, Gamble attended the University of Manchester, where he graduated in 1891 B.Sc. and obtained in 1982 the Bishop Berkeley Fellowship. He then studied at Leipzig University. Returning to Manchester, he received in 1893 his M.Sc. At the University of Manchester, he became in 1893 junior lecturer and demonstrator in zoology, in 1895 senior lecturer and demonstrator, and afterwards was promoted to assistant-director of the University Zoological Laboratories. He received his D.Sc. in 1900. He was Secretary of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society from 1905 to 1908.
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