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.
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List of the most influential people in Biology,
#16551
Hans Schinz
1858 - 1941 (83 years)
Hans Schinz was a Swiss explorer and botanist who was a native of Zürich. In 1884 he participated in an exploratory expedition to German Southwest Africa that was organized by German merchant Adolf Lüderitz . For the next few years Schinz undertook extensive scientific studies of the northern parts of the colony. As a result of the expedition, he published Deutsch-Südwestafrika, Forschungsreisen durch die deutschen Schutzgebiete Groß- Nama- und Hereroland, nach dem Kunene, dem Ngamisee und Kalahari 1884-1887 . This work was an important scientific, geographic and ethnographic study of the colony, and was one of the first comprehensive works on the Ovamboland region.
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Peter Boysen Jensen
1883 - 1959 (76 years)
Peter Boysen Jensen was a Danish plant physiologist. His research was fundamental to further work on the auxin theory of tropisms. Early life and education Peter was born in Hjerting, near Esbjerg in southern Jutland. Being raised on a farm, he discovered early his affinity to nature. He studied botany during his first premed year, and decided to focus on plant physiology after being influenced by ecologist Eugenius Warming. and Wilhelm Johannsen were Boysen Jensen's plant physiology teachers and advisors. While he was a college student in Copenhagen however, neither of these was actively involved in experimental plant physiology.
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Josef Engel
1816 - 1899 (83 years)
Josef Engel was an anatomist from Austria-Hungary. He was appointed professor of anatomy at Zürich in 1844 and later he became professor of physiology also. Five years afterward, he was appointed professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Prague. In 1854 he became professor of anatomy at the Josephsakademie , Vienna, in which position he remained until 1874. He made many important contributions to the systematization of anatomical science and its study.
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Eusebio Oehl
1827 - 1903 (76 years)
Eusebio Oehl was an Italian histologist and physiologist who was a native of Lodi. Biography Oehl studied medicine at the University of Pavia, and following graduation , he continued his education in Vienna under Joseph Hyrtl and Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke . Afterwards, he returned to Pavia, where he taught classes in histology at the Collegio Ghislieri and at the university. In 1864 he attained the chair of physiology at the institute of physiology in Pavia.
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Ernest Overton
1865 - 1933 (68 years)
Charles Ernest Overton was a British and Swedish physiologist and biologist, now regarded as a pioneer of the theory of the cell membrane. In the last years of the 19th century Overton did experimental work, allowing the distinction to be drawn between the cell wall of plants and their cytoplasmic membrane. He studied the permeability of a range of biological materials to around 500 chemical compounds. In 1900, Overton proposed a biomembrane model "Overton Biomembrane Model" which stated that biomembranes are made up of lipids. He gave this statement on the basis of observation of transport o...
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Luuk Tinbergen
1915 - 1955 (40 years)
Luuk Tinbergen was a Dutch ornithologist and ecologist. Tinbergen was the youngest of three eminent brothers — both Jan and Nikolaas won Nobel Prizes, for economics and physiology or medicine, respectively.
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Arend Friedrich August Wiegmann
1802 - 1841 (39 years)
Arend Friedrich August Wiegmann was a German zoologist and herpetologist born in Braunschweig. He studied medicine and philology at the University of Leipzig, and afterwards was an assistant to Martin Lichtenstein in Berlin. In 1828 he became a professor at Cologne, and two years later was an extraordinary professor at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin.
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Ernst Albert Gäumann
1893 - 1963 (70 years)
Ernst Albert Gäumann was a Swiss botanist and mycologist. Born in Lyss, Canton of Bern, he obtained his early education in Biel, where he experienced both German and French languages and cultures. Studying with Eduard Fischer at the University of Bern, Gäumann received his PhD in 1917 for his research on Peronospora, a genus of water molds. After travels and study in Sweden, the United States, and the East Indies, Gäumann worked as a plant pathologist in Buitenzorg, Java, from 1919 to 1922, and then as a botanist in Zurich for several years. He held a position at the Swiss Federal Institute o...
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Christian August Voigt
1808 - 1890 (82 years)
Christian August Voigt was an Austrian anatomist born in Brody, Galicia. He studied medicine in Vienna, receiving his doctorate in 1841 with a dissertation titled, De systemate Intermedio vasorum eiusque radicibus. In Vienna, he was influenced by the work of anatomist Christian Joseph Berres . From 1847 to 1850, he was a professor at the surgical-medical college in Laibach, afterwards teaching classes in Lemberg , Krakow and Vienna , where he was a professor of anatomy and histology. Voigt was a member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences.
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Aoyama Tanemichi
1859 - 1917 (58 years)
Aoyama Tanemichi was a medical scientist and doctor specializing in internal medicine. He became a member of the Imperial Japan Academy in 1906, received the first class medal, "Order of the Sacred Treasure", in 1916, and was given the title of Danshaku in 1917.
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William Rutherford
1839 - 1899 (60 years)
William Rutherford was a Scottish physician and physiologist. For 25 years he was professor of physiology at the University of Edinburgh, and contributed to the development of experimental physiology. He was Fullerian Professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy from 1872 to 1875.
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Ralpha A. Lewin
#16563
Jan Ritzema Bos
1850 - 1928 (78 years)
Jan Ritzema Bos was a Dutch plant pathologist and zoologist. He served as the first director of the Willie Commelin Scholten Foundation and founder of the Plant Protection Service in 1899 in Amsterdam. Bos described several species of plant nematode.
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Christian Wilhelm Braune
1831 - 1892 (61 years)
Christian Wilhelm Braune was a German anatomist. He is known for his excellent lithographs of cross-sections of the human body, and his pioneer work in biomechanics. He also pioneered the use of frozen cadavers for anatomical investigations.
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L. L. Langstroth
1810 - 1895 (85 years)
Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth was an American apiarist, clergyman, and teacher, and considered to be the father of American beekeeping. He recognized the concept of bee-space, a minimum distance that bees avoid sealing up. Although not his own discovery, the use of this principle allowed for the use of frames that the bees leave separate and this allowed the use of rectangular frames within the design of what is now called the Langstroth hive.
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Gustaf Oskar Andersson Malme
1864 - 1937 (73 years)
Gustaf Oskar Andersson Malme was a Swedish botanist. He studied at Uppsala University, earning his PhD in 1892. From 1895 - 1905, he was a curator at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. Then from 1905 to 1911, he was a lecturer in biology and chemistry at Högre Latinläroverket in Stockholm. Afterwards, he taught classes in zoology and biology at a teachers' training college in Stockholm.
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Byron Halsted
1852 - 1918 (66 years)
Byron David Halsted was an American botanist and plant pathologist. Halsted was born at Venice, New York. He studied at Michigan State University and at Harvard . In 1885, he began teaching botany at Iowa State and in 1889, he moved on to Rutgers in New Jersey.
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John Ellis
1710 - 1776 (66 years)
John Ellis aka Jean Ellis was a British linen merchant and naturalist. Ellis was the first to have a published written description of the Venus flytrap and its botanical name. Ellis specialised in the study of corals. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1754 and in the following year published An essay towards the Natural History of the Corallines. He was awarded the Copley Medal in 1767. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1774. His A Natural History of Many Uncommon and Curious Zoophytes, written with Daniel Solander, was published posthumously in 1776.
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Richard Karl Hjalmar Frey
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Richard Karl Hjalmar Frey was a Finnish entomologist. From 1919 to 1955, Richard Frey was head of the Finnish Museum of Natural History. He was primarily interested in Diptera and he described many new species in this Order. He studied exotic insects as well as those of Finland, especially those of Madeira and Cape Verde. Frey acquired by exchange or purchase many collections, notably the Georg Böttcher collection of Philippine Diptera. When he retired, the University of Finland purchased his collection for the museum.
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David Gozal
#16571
Oscar Hertwig
1849 - 1922 (73 years)
Oscar Hertwig was a German embryologist and zoologist known for his research in developmental biology and evolution. Hertwig is credited as the first man to observe sexual reproduction by looking at the cells of sea urchins under the microscope.
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Francis Day
1829 - 1889 (60 years)
Francis Talbot Day was an army surgeon and naturalist in the Madras Presidency who later became the Inspector-General of Fisheries in India and Burma. A pioneer ichthyologist, he described more than three hundred fishes in the two-volume work on The Fishes of India. He also wrote the fish volumes of the Fauna of British India series. He was also responsible for the introduction of trout into the Nilgiri hills, for which he received a medal from the French Societe d'Acclimatation. Many of his fish specimens are distributed across museums with only a small fraction deposited in the British Mus...
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Otto Frank
1865 - 1944 (79 years)
Otto Frank was a Grand Duchy of Hesse born medical doctor and physiologist who made contributions to cardiac physiology and cardiology. The Frank–Starling law of the heart is named after him and Ernest Starling.
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Friedrich Gottlob Hayne
1763 - 1832 (69 years)
Friedrich Gottlob Hayne was a German botanist, taxonomist, pharmacist and professor. Hayne showed an early interest in the plant world. From 1778 until 1796 he worked as a pharmacist in Berlin, and was acquainted with the botanist Carl Ludwig Willdenow of about the same age, who at the time was also a pharmacist in Berlin. From 1797 he worked on botanical and technical commissions for the factories department of the Prussian government.
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Nils Johan Andersson
1821 - 1880 (59 years)
Nils Johan Andersson , was a Swedish botanist and traveller. He studied at Uppsala University between 1840-45 obtaining a DSc. On 30 September 1851 he accompanied the Swedish expedition as botanist aboard the frigate , sailing from Karlskrona under the command of Captain Christian Adolf Virgin , on the first Swedish circumnavigation, calling at Honolulu, Tahiti, San Francisco, Sydney and Manila, various South American ports, the Galapagos, Hong Kong and Singapore. On this voyage he collected at the Cape of Good Hope in April 1853. Returning to Sweden, he was appointed Professor of Botany at Lund University.
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Daniel John Cunningham
1850 - 1909 (59 years)
Daniel John Cunningham, was a Scottish physician, zoologist, and anatomist, famous for Cunningham's Text-book of Anatomy and Cunningham's Manual of Practical Anatomy. Biography Cunningham was born in the manse at Crieff, the son of the Very Rev John Cunningham and of his wife Susan Porteous Murray. His father became Moderator of the General Assembly in 1886.
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Adrian Hardy Haworth
1767 - 1833 (66 years)
Adrian Hardy Haworth was an English entomologist, botanist and carcinologist. Family The younger son of Benjamin Haworth, of Haworth Hall and Anne Booth, he was educated at Hull Grammar School and by tutors who steered him towards a career in the law. After inheriting the family estate, he devoted all his time to natural history.
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Theodore T. Kozlowski
#16579
Charles Antoine Lemaire
1800 - 1871 (71 years)
Charles Antoine Lemaire , was a French botanist and botanical author, noted for his publications on Cactaceae. Education Born the son of Antoine Charles Lemaire and Marie Jeanne Davio, he had an excellent early education, and acquired the reputation of being an outstanding scholar. He studied at the University of Paris and was appointed as Professor of Classical Literature there. At some stage his botanical interest was sparked and developed by his association with M. Neumann, horticulturist at the Museum of Natural History.
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John Stanley Gardiner
1872 - 1946 (74 years)
John Stanley Gardiner was a British zoologist. Biography Stanley, as he was known, was the younger son of John Jephson Gardiner and Sarah McTier. He was born in Jordanstown in 1872 – two years after his brother Arthur. Jephson was a member of the Anglican clergy and, at the time of his marriage to Sarah in 1868, was chaplain to Lord Dufferin at Carrickfergus . Stanley's mother died five months after he was born and in 1874, he and Arthur were taken by their father to England. They initially lived in Marshfield, Wiltshire, with Jephson having the position of Curate there. In 1876, Jephson and his two sons moved to Wonersh, near Guildford, Surrey.
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Jean Pierre Étienne Vaucher
1763 - 1841 (78 years)
Jean Pierre Étienne Vaucher was a Swiss Protestant pastor and botanist who was a native of the Republic of Geneva. He studied theology at Geneva, and from 1795 to 1821 was a pastor at the Church of Saint-Gervais. From 1808 to 1840 he was a professor of church history at the University of Geneva, and for a number of years he also taught classes in botany. Among his better-known students were botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle , scientist Hans Conrad Escher von der Linth and Charles-Albert , the future King of Sardinia.
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Izrail Agol
1891 - 1937 (46 years)
Izrail Iossofovich Agol was a Soviet geneticist and philosopher. He was a member of the USSR Academy of Science, worked briefly in the United States of America, and took an interest in radiation induced mutagenesis. As a Marxist philosopher, he also studied vitalist and mechanist views in biology and their relation to Marxism. He was killed in the aftermath of Trofim Lysenko's rise in the Stalin regime.
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John Merton Aldrich
1866 - 1934 (68 years)
John Merton Aldrich was an American entomologist. Aldrich was the Associate Curator of Insects at the United States National Museum. He is considered one of the most prolific entomologists in the study of flies.
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Charles Howard Curran
1894 - 1972 (78 years)
Charles Howard Curran was a Canadian entomologist who specialized in Diptera. Curran's main taxonomic interests were in brachyceran flies, particularly the flower flies Syrphidae, in which he described 723 species. He described 2,648 species over his career. He was active in the study of insect control. His 1934 work The Families and Genera of North American Diptera was an important and comprehensive work on the topic of North American fly genera.
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Valentin Dogiel
1882 - 1955 (73 years)
Valentin[e] Alexandrovich Dogiel was a Russian and Soviet zoologist, specialized in parasitology and protozoology. He has been considered the founder of evolutionary parasitology and was the author of an influential textbook of parasitology.
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Aaron Louis Treadwell
1866 - 1947 (81 years)
Aaron Louis Treadwell, Ph.D. was a college professor of zoology at Vassar. He was born at Redding, Connecticut, and educated at Wesleyan University and at the University of Chicago . He was a professor of zoology and geology at Miami University , professor of biology at Vassar , and afterwards professor of zoology. In addition to his work in the schools, he was instructor at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. Treadwell published The Cytogeny of Podarke obscura . His writings dealt chiefly with annelid systematics and embryonics.
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Johann Friedrich Klotzsch
1805 - 1860 (55 years)
Johann Friedrich Klotzsch was a German pharmacist and botanist. His principal work was in the field of mycology, with the study and description of many species of mushroom. Klotzsch was born in Wittenberg. Originally trained as a pharmacist, he later enrolled in pharmaceutical and botanical studies in Berlin. In 1830–32 he was curator of William Jackson Hooker's herbarium at the University of Glasgow. Beginning in 1834 he collected plants in Saxony, Bohemia, Austria, Styria and possibly Hungary. In 1838 he replaced Adelbert von Chamisso as curator and director of the Royal Herbarium in Berli...
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Ambrosius Hubrecht
1853 - 1915 (62 years)
Ambrosius Arnold Willem Hubrecht was a Dutch zoologist. Hubrecht studied zoology at Utrecht University with Harting and Donders, for periods joining Selenka in Leiden and later Erlangen, and Gegenbauer in Heidelberg. He graduated magna cum laude with Harting in 1874 with a study on nemertine worms. In 1875–1882 he worked at the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden, where he was the curator of ichthyology and herpetology, and in 1882 became professor at Utrecht. In 1890–1891 he traveled in Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, where he made embryological studies, notably on the tarsier. He visited the United States in 1896 and 1907.
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Heinrich Friese
1860 - 1948 (88 years)
Heinrich Friedrich August Karl Ludwig Friese was a German biologist and entomologist, a specialist of bees . Between 1883 and 1939, he described 1,989 new species and 564 new varieties or subspecies of insects, 99% of which were bees.
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Georgi Petrovich Dementiev
1898 - 1969 (71 years)
Georgi Petrovich Dementiev was a Russian and Soviet ornithologist and professor at the University of Moscow. His studies based on museum collections and collaboration with others, notably N. A. Gladkov, resulted in a major six-volume work on the birds of the Soviet Union which was published between 1951 and 1954. He had a special interest in the birds of prey.
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Carl Heinrich
1880 - 1955 (75 years)
Carl Heinrich was an American entomologist. Life He studied Greek and drama at the University of Chicago, he moved to Washington D.C., in 1902, where he worked in business. In 1908, he went to New York to study music. Heinrich moved back to Washington and in 1913 joined the United States Department of Agriculture. He initially worked on applied entomology but later switched to specialise in the study of Lepidoptera.
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Paul Friedrich August Ascherson
1834 - 1913 (79 years)
Paul Friedrich August Ascherson was a German botanist. His author citation is Asch., although Aschers. has been used in the past. Ascherson was born in Berlin in 1834 as the son of health counsellor. In 1850, he started studying medicine at the University of Berlin, but soon started getting more interested in botany. In 1855, he received his doctorate for a dissertation about the flora of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. In the 1850s, he started to botanize in Saxony, including several excursions with Ludwig Schneider and Gustav Maass. In 1860, Ascherson became an assistant at the Botanical Garden in Berlin; in 1865 he also started working at the Royal Herbarium.
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Christen Smith
1785 - 1816 (31 years)
Christen Smith also known as Christian Smith or Chretien Smith, was an early 19th-century Norwegian physician, economist and naturalist, particularly botanist. He died, only 30 years old during a dramatic expedition to the Congo River in 1816, leaving a wealth of botanical material.
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James George Needham
1868 - 1957 (89 years)
James George Needham was an American entomologist. After studying with John Henry Comstock at Cornell University he taught biology at Lake Forest University . In 1908 returned to Cornell as assistant professor of limnology. When Comstock retired in 1914, Needham became head of the Department of Entomology at Cornell until his retirement in 1935. Needham published numerous scientific articles, educational papers, and textbooks but is best known for the Comstock–Needham system for describing insect wing venation.
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A. B. Graham
1868 - 1960 (92 years)
Albert Belmont Graham was born near Lena, Ohio. He was a country schoolmaster and agriculture extension pioneer at Ohio State University. Graham taught at an integrated rural school in Brown Township, Miami County.
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Eugen Albrecht
1872 - 1908 (36 years)
Eugen Albrecht was a German pathologist. His research largely dealt with the physical-chemical status of cells under normal and pathological conditions. In 1895 he obtained his doctorate from the University of Munich, where he was a student of Karl Wilhelm von Kupffer. Afterwards, he was an assistant to Wilhelm Roux at the institute of anatomy in Halle, followed by work at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples . In 1899 he became an assistant to Otto Bollinger at the institute of pathology in Munich. From 1900 to 1904, he served as prosector at the Städtisches Krankenhaus rechts der Isar.
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Theodor Magnus Fries
1832 - 1913 (81 years)
Theodor "Thore" Magnus Fries , was a Swedish botanist, lichenologist, and Arctic explorer. He was the son of the mycologist Elias Fries. Following in his father's footsteps, Fries studied botany, obtaining his doctoral degree in 1857 at Uppsala. He is credited for introducing the term in a commentary about the lichen genus Stereocaulon in an 1858 publication. He became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1865 and professor of botany and applied economics at Uppsala in 1877. His most notable work was Lichenographia scandinavica . He also produced a two-volume biography of Carl...
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Franz Christian Boll
1849 - 1879 (30 years)
Franz Boll was a German physiologist and histologist. He was the son of Lutheran theologian Franz Boll . Boll studied medicine in Bonn, Heidelberg and Berlin, and in 1870 worked at the physiological institute of Emil du Bois-Reymond in Berlin. Later he became a professor at the University of Genoa, and from 1873 to 1879 was a professor of physiology in Rome. He died in Rome on 19 December 1879 at the age of 30.
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W. H. Gaskell
1847 - 1914 (67 years)
Walter Holbrook Gaskell FRS was a British physiologist. Early life The son of barrister John Dakin Gaskell, he was educated at Highgate School and Trinity College, Cambridge, receiving his BA as a wrangler in 1869 and becoming a Fellow of Trinity Hall.
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Christian Friedrich Hornschuch
1793 - 1850 (57 years)
Christian Friedrich Hornschuch was a German botanist. Biography Hornschuch was born in Rodach, Bavaria. In 1808 he started his career as an apprentice at a pharmacy in Hildburghausen. In 1813 he moved to Regensburg as an assistant to botanist David Heinrich Hoppe , and afterwards worked as an assistant to Heinrich Christian Funck in Gefrees, where he performed research of mosses native to the Fichtel Mountains.
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