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,
#16651
Raphaël Lépine
1840 - 1919 (79 years)
Jacques Raphaël Lépine was a French physiologist who was a native of Lyon. Biography From 1860 he served as interne to the hospitals of Lyon, and later moved to Paris, where from 1865 he also worked as a hospital intern. In Paris he was a student of Jean-Martin Charcot . Afterwards, he continued his education at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig . At Karl Ludwig's laboratory in Leipzig he performed important studies on the vasomotor nerves of the tongue.
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Emil Osann
1787 - 1842 (55 years)
Emil Osann was a German physician and physiologist from Weimar. He was a founder of scientific balneology. He was the brother of philologist Friedrich Gotthilf Osann and chemist Gottfried Osann . He studied medicine in Jena and Göttingen, and later worked an assistant in a Berlin polyclinic founded by his uncle, Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland . In 1826 he became a full professor of Heilmittellehre , and in 1833 became director of the aforementioned clinic.
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Johann Samuel Eduard d'Alton
1803 - 1854 (51 years)
Johann Samuel Eduard d'Alton was a German anatomist born in Sankt Goar. He was the son of engraver Eduard Joseph d'Alton . He studied medicine at the University of Bonn, and subsequently taught anatomical drawing at the Berlin Academy of Arts . After the death of Johann Friedrich Meckel , d'Alton was appointed his successor as professor of anatomy at the University of Halle. He maintained this position until his death in 1854. In 1838 he became a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina.
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Otto Fuhrmann
1871 - 1945 (74 years)
Otto Fuhrmann was a Swiss parasitologist who specialized in the field of helminthology. He studied at the University of Basel as a pupil of Ludwig Ruetimeyer and Friedrich Zschokke. He then continued his education at Geneva, where he was persuaded by zoologist Carl Vogt to focus his studies on parasitic flatworms. In 1894 he received his doctorate with the thesis "Die Turbellarien der Umgebung von Basel", and following a stint as an assistant at the University of Geneva, he relocated to the University of Neuchâtel, where from 1895 to 1941 he taught classes in comparative anatomy and zoology.
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Jacques Epelbaum
#16656
Vitangelo Bisceglia
1749 - 1817 (68 years)
Vitangelo Bisceglia was an Italian botanist, agronomist and professor. He taught inside the University of Altamura. Because of his being a polymath, he's been described as "an encyclopedic spirit, the honor of the Muses".
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Torsten Sjögren
1896 - 1974 (78 years)
Karl Gustaf Torsten Sjögren was a Swedish psychiatrist and geneticist. He was born in Södertälje and died in Gothenburg. In Stockholm, he graduated as a licentiate of medicine in 1925, and in 1931 he became doctor of medicine and a docent of psychiatry at Lund university. Torsten Sjögren was the chairman of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations in the late 1930s. According to Stefan Kühl in For the Betterment of the Race , Sjögren was submissive to the Nazi party with their increasingly controversial views on eugenics, which contributed to the disintegration of the organization in the latter half of the 1930s.
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Marie‐françcoise Chesselet
#16659
Sherman C. Bishop
1887 - 1951 (64 years)
Sherman Chauncey Bishop was a herpetologist and arachnologist from New York. He studied at Cornell University and, with Cyrus R. Crosby, gave the spruce-fir moss spider its scientific name. His Handbook of Salamanders was the first serious and comprehensive treatment of North American salamanders since Cope .
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Richard Zander
1855 - 1918 (63 years)
Richard Zander was a German anatomist. He was the father of surgeon Paul Zander . From 1876 he studied medicine at the University of Königsberg, where his influences were Karl Wilhelm von Kupffer and Ernst Neumann. He received his medical doctorate in 1881 and worked as an assistant at the institute of pathology in Halle and at the anatomical institute in Königsberg. In 1884 he obtained his habilitation for anatomy and in 1892 became an associate professor. In 1912 he was named an honorary full professor of anatomy at the University of Königsberg. Until women were allowed to study medicine at the university, he conducted lectures for female students at the Institute of Anatomy.
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William Warren
1839 - 1914 (75 years)
William Warren was an English entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera. William Warren was first educated at Oakham School, and subsequently graduated from the University of Cambridge, taking first-class classical honours in 1861. He then taught at Sedbergh School, Doncaster Grammar School and Stubbington House School. He collected extensively in the British Isles, notably at Wicken Fen, with a special interest in Micro-lepidoptera. After giving up teaching in 1882, he lived in Cambridge and devoted himself fully to entomology, publishing around 40 papers on British moths between 1878 and 1889.
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Frithiof Holmgren
1831 - 1897 (66 years)
Alarik Frithiof Holmgren was a Swedish physician, physiologist and professor at Upsala University, most noted for his research of color blindness. He was a vocal opponent of vivisection, and particularly the use of curare to immobilize subjects so they appeared peaceful while enduring great pain.
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Steven A. Juliano
#16664
Hiroyuki Arai
#16665
Sarah Martha Baker
1887 - 1917 (30 years)
Sarah Martha Baker D.Sc. F.L.S. was an English botanist and ecologist who is remembered for her studies of brown seaweeds and zonation patterns on the seashore. Early life Born in London on 4 June 1887, she was the daughter of Martha Braithwaite Baker and George Samuel Baker and grew up in a Quaker family with two younger brothers, George and Bevan. As well as their main London home the family had a country house at Mersea Island where Baker first took an interest in seaweed. She is said to have been interested in plants and flowers from an early age. Another interest was art and she studied briefly at the Slade School of Art before moving into science.
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Anatol Heintz
1898 - 1975 (77 years)
Anatol Heintz was a Russo-Norwegian palaeontologist. He was born in Petrograd to the geophysicist Yevgeniy Alfredovich Heintz and Olga Fyodorovna Hoffmann . He had two older siblings. In 1919 the family fled to Norway. He studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry from 1919 to 1920 and at the Royal Frederick University from 1920, where he graduated in palaeontology in 1928. He was then hired as a curator at the Paleontological Museum of Tøyen. He took the dr.philos. degree in 1932 on the thesis The Structure of Dinichthys. A Contribution to our Knowledge of the Arthrodira.
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Steven Richard Hirsch
#16668
Peter Nansen
#16669
John William McNee
1887 - 1984 (97 years)
Sir John William McNee FRSE DSO was a 20th century British pathologist and bacteriologist. Life He was born on 17 December 1887 in Mount Vernon in north Lanarkshire He then began lecturing in Pathology at the university under Sir Robert Muir. In 1911 he was awarded a McCunn Scholarship and with a further Carnegie Research Fellowship in 1912 he travelled to Freiburg University in Germany to do postgraduate studies. Returning in 1914 he received his doctorate plus both the Bellahouston Gold Medal and John Hunter Gold Medal.
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Margaret Sylvia Gilliland
1917 - 1990 (73 years)
Margaret Sylvia Gilliland was an Australian biochemist, academic and anti-nuclear campaiger. The daughter of Robert Dugald Bertie and Kathleen Crommelin, she was born Margaret Sylvia Bertie in Grenfell, New South Wales; her uncle Charles Henry Bertie was a librarian and historian. She received a BSc in biochemistry from the University of Melbourne. In 1942, she married Alexander Forbes Gilliland ; the couple had three children. Gilliland later worked as a biochemistry demonstrator at the University of Queensland where she was also an active member of the Queensland Association of University Women.
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Ernst Weinland
1869 - 1932 (63 years)
Ernst Weinland was a German physiologist and parasitologist. He studied medicine at the universities of Munich, Tübingen, Berlin and Leipzig. He also studied zoology, and in the process earned a PhD at the University of Berlin. After finishing his medical studies at Leipzig, he worked as an assistant physician in Esslingen and as an assistant in the laboratory of Karl von Voit at the University of Munich. In 1899 he obtained his habilitation for physiology and afterwards became an associate professor at the technical school in Freising. From 1913 to 1932 he was a professor of physiology at th...
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Vassilii Czernajew
1794 - 1871 (77 years)
Vasiliǐ Matveievitch Czernajew was a Russian botanist responsible for collecting and describing at least 5 new genera and 9 new species of fungi between 1822 and 1839. His name is written in the Cyrillic alphabet and has appeared in scientific documentation with a number of different romanizations, including V. Czernajev, Basil Matveievich Czerniaiev, B.M. Czernaiev, B.M. Czernjaëv, B.M. Czernjaëw, V.M. Tschernaiew, V. Tschernajef, and V. Czerniaier, although the official abbreviation seems to be consistently written as Czern.
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William V. Mayer
1920 - 1989 (69 years)
William V. Mayer was an American educator. Career He got his A.B. in zoology from the University of California and his Ph.D. in biology at Stanford University. During his long teaching career he taught at Stanford University University, Wayne State University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Colorado, Boulder. He was a member of the National Association of Biology Teachers from 1966 to 1989 and served as its president in 1967.
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Gerhard Schmidt
1901 - 1981 (80 years)
Gerhard Schmidt was a German-born physician and biochemist who was regarded as "a world authority on nucleic acids and phospholipids." Career Life in Germany He was born in Stuttgart, where his father Julius Schmidt was a professor of chemistry at the University of Stuttgart. He studied medicine at the University of Tübingen and the Goethe University Frankfurt, and earned a doctorate at the Goethe University under the supervision of the university's then-rector Gustav Embden in 1926. He then worked as a research assistant and as a Privatdozent at the Goethe University's department of biochem...
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Erwin Hinckley Barbour
1856 - 1947 (91 years)
Erwin Hinckley Barbour was an American geologist and paleontologist. He was born near Oxford, Ohio, and was educated at Miami University and at Yale, where he graduated in 1882. He was assistant paleontologist to the United States Geological Survey under Othniel Charles Marsh from 1882 to 1888. He then taught at the University of Iowa for two years, before being hired by the University of Nebraska in 1891 as head of the Department of Geology.
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Wilhelm Vischer
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Wilhelm Vischer was a Swiss botanist whose areas of interest were algae and spermatophytes. He studied medicine in Geneva and Basel, and natural sciences in Munich, where in 1914 he obtained his PhD. At the University of Munich, he was a student of Karl Ritter von Goebel. Following graduation, with Robert Hippolyte Chodat, he participated in a botanical excursion to Paraguay. After his return to Switzerland, he spent several years in Geneva , working on plants that were collected in Paraguay.
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Gustaf Troedsson
1891 - 1954 (63 years)
Gustaf Timothy Troedsson , was a Swedish geologist and paleontologist. He was the son of Troed Troedsson, and the father of Trygve Troedsson. Troedsson defended his Ph.D. in geology in 1918 on the thesis Om Skånes brachiopodskiffer at Lund University, where he became Associate Professor in 1919. He was Professor of Geology at Stockholm University from 1924 till 1929 and became a lecturer in biology and geography at Higher general secondary school in Helsingborg in 1929. He became lecturer in geography and biology at the Higher general secondary school on Kungsholmen in Stockholm and associate professor of geology at the University of Stockholm in 1933.
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Ferdinand Paul Wirtgen
1848 - 1924 (76 years)
Ferdinand Paul Wirtgen was a German pharmacist and botanist. He was the son of botanist Philipp Wilhelm Wirtgen . As a young man, he trained as a pharmacist in St. Johann an der Saar, followed by service in an army garrison hospital at Koblenz . He then studied pharmacy in Bonn, and later spent two years as a pharmacist in the town of Ettenheim. In 1875, he returned to St. Johann, where he eventually took ownership of a pharmacy. From 1889 onward, he lived in Bonn, where focused his energies towards botanical research. In 1920 he became an honorary professor at the University of Bonn.
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Paul Joannes Van Diest
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Christian Stenhammar
1783 - 1866 (83 years)
Christian Stenhammar was a Swedish naturalist interested in lichens and an entomologist who specialised in Diptera.His collection is held by Uppsala University. He was a clergyman. Works Försök till Gruppering och Revision af de Svenska Ephydrinae af Chr. Stenhammar. Stockholm , P.A. Nordstedt, 1844. onlineSchedulæ criticæ de lichenibus exsiccatis Sueciæ Lichenes Sueciæ exsiccati editio altera .Skandinaviens copromyzinæ
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Johann Sperling
1603 - 1658 (55 years)
Johann Sperling was a German physician, zoologist and physicist, deacon and Rektor of the University of Wittenberg. He was among the first to practise zoology as a natural science, writing a first handbook about animals, Zoologia physica.
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Jean Broadhurst
1873 - 1954 (81 years)
Jean Alice Broadhurst was an American educator, botanist and bacteriologist, known for her work in detecting the measles virus. Career Broadhurst graduated from New Jersey State Normal School in 1892; thereafter joining the school's faculty. She studied at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City; taught in the department of botany and zoology at Barnard College; and in 1906 joined the Teachers College, Columbia University faculty. Broadhurst earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1914, and retired as emerita professor at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1939.
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Horace Jayne
1859 - 1913 (54 years)
Horace Fort Jayne was an American zoölogist and educator. Biography He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania , and studied biology at the universities of Leipzig and Jena in 1882–1883, and at Johns Hopkins for a year. In 1884 he was appointed professor of vertebrate morphology at The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, and became a director of the institute. He was a professor of zoölogy at the University of Pennsylvania from 1894 to 1905, secretary of Penn's biological faculty , and dean of Penn's college faculty . He became a trustee of Drexel Institute, and served as co-editor of several scientific journals.
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William Jameson
1796 - 1873 (77 years)
William Jameson was a Scottish-Ecuadorian botanist. He was born in Edinburgh and studied at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He made several voyages as a ship's surgeon, first to Baffin Bay, then to South America. In 1826 he settled in Quito, Ecuador. He was then appointed professor of chemistry and botany at Universidad Central del Ecuador. He went back to Edinburgh in 1869, returned to Quito in 1872, and died shortly thereafter.
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Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe
1894 - 1976 (82 years)
Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe was a Norwegian zoologist and comparative psychologist. He was the first person to describe a pecking order of hens. Career Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe was at the age of 19, in 1913, the first to describe a pecking order of hens. He based findings on an interest in observing chickens at a farm where he spend his summer holidays. The dominance hierarchy of chickens and other birds that he studied led him to the observation that hens had an established social order determining who dared to peck whom in a fight. This order was, Schjelderup-Ebbe concluded, not necessarily ...
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Robert James Douglas Graham
1884 - 1950 (66 years)
Robert James Douglas Graham FRSE was a Scottish botanist. Life He was born on 20 July 1884 in Perth, the son of Dr John Thomas Graham. His family lived at 4 Athole Crescent in Perth. He was educated at Perth Academy then attended the University of St Andrews, graduating with an MA in 1904.
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Greenfield Sluder
#16688
Salomon Alberti
1540 - 1600 (60 years)
Salomon Alberti was a German physician who is best known for being the first to illustrate venous valves in his book Tres Orationes . Life Salomon Alberti was born in Naumburg. His father who was from Nürnberg died when Salomon was just a year old leaving his mother Dorothea to take care of him. As she was too poor to provide him an education, he was supported by the city council and given a free education. He then went to study medicine at the University of Wittenberg, obtaining a degree in liberal arts in 1564 and then became a professor of physics in 1575 and a professor of anatomy in 1577.
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Michael. J. Balick
#16690
Harriet Richardson
1874 - 1958 (84 years)
Harriet Richardson Searle was an American carcinologist. She was known as the first lady of isopods and was one of the first female carcinologists, with only Mary Jane Rathbun before her. Biography Richardson was born on May 9, 1874, in Washington, D.C., to Charles and Charlotte Ann Richardson. She attended the Friends School and Mount Vernon Seminary in Washington before attending Vassar College - where she became interested in biology - from which she graduated in 1896 with a BA, and again with a master's degree in zoology in 1901.
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Philip Powell Calvert
1871 - 1961 (90 years)
Philip Powell Calvert was an American entomologist, recognised as a leading authority on the Odonata . A long-term teacher and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, he was President of the American Entomological Society 1900-15. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1918. His 1893 publication Catalogue of the Odonata of the Vicinity of Philadelphia, with an Introduction to the Study of this Group served as a model for regional insect study and was the first major attempt at a guide to the order. Calvert went on to publish over 300 notes and articles on the Odonata. ...
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Euricius Cordus
1486 - 1535 (49 years)
Euricius Cordus born Heinrich Ritze was a German humanist poet, physician, botanist and naturalist. He is considered one of the founders of botany in Germany. Cordus was born in Simtshausen near Marburg the youngest of thirteen children born to a miller. He was educated at Frankenberg / Eder as well as at Marburg. He became a teacher in Kassel from 1509 to 1511 and then as a rent clerk in Felsberg. He later went to Erfurt where he met Conrad Mutian. He received a master's degree in 1516 and became rector at the Saint Marien college. He moved to study medicine in 1519 and became a doctor in 1521 and practiced in Braunschweig.
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Sven Gustaf Hedin
1859 - 1933 (74 years)
Sven Gustaf Hedin was a Swedish chemist and physiologist credited with the discovery of histidine. He was born in Alseda parish, Jönköping County. He began his studies in 1878 and received his bachelor's degree in 1881 at Uppsala University. In 1886 he received his doctorate in philosophy and doctorate of medicine in 1893 in Lund and docent in chemistry in 1886 and became a researcher there in 1895. From 1900 to 1907 he was made head of the pathological chemistry division at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in London, and professor of medicinal and physiological chemistry at Uppsala University in 1908.
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Alexandr Alexandrovich Fischer von Waldheim
1839 - 1920 (81 years)
#16695
Frances Garnet Wolseley, 2nd Viscountess Wolseley
1872 - 1936 (64 years)
Frances Garnet Wolseley, 2nd Viscountess Wolseley was an English gardening author and instructor. Her Glynde College for Lady Gardeners in East Sussex had the patronage of famous gardening names such as Gertrude Jekyll, Ellen Willmott, and William Robinson.
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Martin J. Kushmerick
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Edward Wyllie Fenton
1889 - 1962 (73 years)
Dr Edward Wyllie Fenton FRSE FLS was a Scottish botanist. He was President of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh 1944–45. Life He was born in Aberdeen on 4 November 1889, the son of Edward W. Fenton, a clerk living at 13 Bon Accord Street. He attended Aberdeen University graduating in 1913. He began lecturing in Botany at the university as soon as he qualified. As with many, his career was interrupted by the First World War during which he served in the Royal Field Artillery. He was commissioned on 6 July 1915. He served in Britain as Chief Instructor in the Signalling Section at the rank of ...
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René Viguier
1880 - 1931 (51 years)
René Viguier was a French botanist known for his investigations of plants within the family Araliaceae. He worked as a préparateur at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle with Philippe Édouard Léon Van Tieghem, afterwards serving as maître de conférences at the Sorbonne. In 1912 he collected botanical specimens in Madagascar with Jean-Henri Humbert. From 1919 to 1931 he was a professor of botany at the University of Caen as well as director of city's botanical garden.
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Adolph E. Waller
1892 - 1975 (83 years)
Adolph E. Waller was a professor of botany and genetics. Waller was a member of the faculty of The Ohio State University for 45 years, where he was an authority on iris breeding and horticulture, plant ecology and genetics.
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Werner Emmanuel Bachmann
1901 - 1951 (50 years)
Werner Emmanuel Bachmann was an American chemist. Bachmann was born in Detroit, Michigan where he studied chemistry and chemical engineering at Wayne State University and later at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor nearby. He completed his doctorate under Moses Gomberg and spent the rest of his academic career at the University of Michigan.
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