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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Biology,
#16651
Andrei Famintsyn
1835 - 1918 (83 years)
Andrei Sergeyevich Famintsyn was a Russian botanist, public figure, and academician of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences . Career Famintsyn attended Saint Petersburg State University and studied under Russian fungal expert Lev Semionovich Tsenkovsky. In 1861, he continued his scientific career as a teacher at his alma mater and became a professor . In 1890, Famintsyn founded and headed the Laboratory of Plant Anatomy and Physiology of the Academy of Sciences .
Go to Profile#16652
Emil von Behring
1854 - 1917 (63 years)
Emil von Behring , born Emil Adolf Behring , was a German physiologist who received the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first one awarded in that field, for his discovery of a diphtheria antitoxin. He was widely known as a "saviour of children", as diphtheria used to be a major cause of child death. His work with the disease, as well as tetanus, has come to bring him most of his fame and acknowledgment. He was honoured with Prussian nobility in 1901, henceforth being known by the surname "von Behring."
Go to Profile#16653
Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link
1767 - 1851 (84 years)
Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link was a German naturalist and botanist. Biography Link was born at Hildesheim as a son of the minister August Heinrich Link , who taught him love of nature through collection of 'natural objects'. He studied medicine and natural sciences at the Hannoverschen Landesuniversität of Göttingen, and graduated as MD in 1789, promoting on his thesis "Flora der Felsgesteine rund um Göttingen" . One of his teachers was the famous natural scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach . He became a private tutor in Göttingen.
Go to Profile#16654
Étienne-Jules Marey
1830 - 1904 (74 years)
Étienne-Jules Marey was a French scientist, physiologist and chronophotographer. His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinematography and the science of laboratory photography. He is widely considered to be a pioneer of photography and an influential pioneer of the history of cinema. He was also a pioneer in establishing a variety of graphical techniques for the display and interpretation of quantitative data from physiological measurement.
Go to Profile#16655
Arnold Adolph Berthold
1803 - 1861 (58 years)
Arnold Adolph Berthold was a German scientist, most notably a physiologist and zoologist . He is best known in modern science for his pioneering experiments in the field of endocrinology. He published works on herpetology, ornithology, entomology and chemistry.
Go to Profile#16656
John Bowlby
1907 - 1990 (83 years)
Edward John Mostyn Bowlby, CBE, FBA, FRCP, FRCPsych was a British psychologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst, notable for his interest in child development and for his pioneering work in attachment theory. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Bowlby as the 49th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#16657
Carl Ludwig Willdenow
1765 - 1812 (47 years)
Carl Ludwig Willdenow was a German botanist, pharmacist, and plant taxonomist. He is considered one of the founders of phytogeography, the study of the geographic distribution of plants. Willdenow was also a mentor of Alexander von Humboldt, one of the earliest and best known phytogeographers. He also influenced Christian Konrad Sprengel, who pioneered the study of plant pollination and floral biology.
Go to Profile#16658
Raymond Pearl
1879 - 1940 (61 years)
Raymond Pearl was an American biologist, regarded as one of the founders of biogerontology. He spent most of his career at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Pearl was a prolific writer of academic books, papers and articles, as well as a committed populariser and communicator of science. At his death, 841 publications were listed against his name. An early eugenicist, he eventually became an important critic of eugenics. He also advanced the concept of carrying capacity, although he didn't use the term, and was a Malthusian concerned with resource limits. He was a critique of mass consum...
Go to Profile#16659
Henrik Dam
1895 - 1976 (81 years)
Carl Peter Henrik Dam was a Danish biochemist and physiologist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1943 for joint work with Edward Doisy in discovering vitamin K and its role in human physiology. Dam's key experiment involved feeding a cholesterol-free diet to chickens. He initially replicated experiments reported by scientists at the Ontario Agricultural College . McFarlane, Graham and Richardson, working on the chick feed program at OAC, had used chloroform to remove all fat from chick chow. They noticed that chicks fed only fat-depleted chow developed hemorrhages and started bleeding from tag sites.
Go to Profile#16660
Reginald Innes Pocock
1863 - 1947 (84 years)
Reginald Innes Pocock F.R.S. was a British zoologist. Pocock was born in Clifton, Bristol, the fourth son of Rev. Nicholas Pocock and Edith Prichard. He began showing interest in natural history at St. Edward's School, Oxford. He received tutoring in zoology from Sir Edward Poulton, and was allowed to explore comparative anatomy at the Oxford Museum. He studied biology and geology at University College, Bristol, under Conwy Lloyd Morgan and William Johnson Sollas. In 1885, he became an assistant at the Natural History Museum, and worked in the section of entomology for a year. He was put in charge of the collections of Arachnida and Myriapoda.
Go to Profile#16661
Franz Steindachner
1834 - 1919 (85 years)
Franz Steindachner was an Austrian zoologist, ichthyologist, and herpetologist. He published over 200 papers on fishes and over 50 papers on reptiles and amphibians. Steindachner described hundreds of new species of fish and dozens of new amphibians and reptiles. At least seven species of reptile have been named after him.
Go to Profile#16662
William E. Castle
1867 - 1962 (95 years)
William Ernest Castle was an early American geneticist. Early years William Ernest Castle was born on a farm in Ohio and took an early interest in natural history. He graduated in 1889 from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, a Baptist college that emphasized classics, and went on to become a teacher of Latin at Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kansas, where he published his first paper on the flowering plants of the area. After three years of teaching, botany won out over Latin.
Go to Profile#16663
Friedrich Loeffler
1852 - 1915 (63 years)
Friedrich August Johannes Loeffler was a German bacteriologist at the University of Greifswald. Biography He obtained his M.D. degree from the University of Berlin in 1874. He worked with Robert Koch from 1879 to 1884 as an assistant in the Imperial Health Office in Berlin. In 1884, he became staff physician at the Friedrich Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and four years later became professor at the University of Greifswald.
Go to Profile#16664
Kliment Timiryazev
1843 - 1920 (77 years)
Kliment Arkadievich Timiryazev was a Russian Imperial botanist and physiologist and a major proponent of the Evolution Theory of Charles Darwin in Russia. He founded a faculty of vegetable physiology and a laboratory at the Petrovskoye Academy.
Go to Profile#16665
Francis Walker
1809 - 1874 (65 years)
Francis Walker was an English entomologist. He was born in Southgate, London, on 31 July 1809 and died at Wanstead, England on 5 October 1874. He was one of the most prolific authors in entomology, and stirred controversy during his later life as his publications resulted in a huge number of junior synonyms. However, his assiduous work on the collections of the British Museum had great significance.
Go to Profile#16666
Charles Tate Regan
1878 - 1943 (65 years)
Charles Tate Regan FRS was a British ichthyologist, working mainly around the beginning of the 20th century. He did extensive work on fish classification schemes. Born in Sherborne, Dorset, he was educated at Derby School and Queens' College, Cambridge and in 1901 joined the staff of the Natural History Museum, where he became Keeper of Zoology, and later director of the entire museum, in which role he served from 1927 to 1938.
Go to Profile#16667
Karl Rudolphi
1771 - 1832 (61 years)
Karl Asmund Rudolphi was a Swedish-born German naturalist, who is credited with being the "father of helminthology". Life Rudolphi was born in Stockholm to German parents. He was awarded his PhD in 1793 and his medical doctorate in 1794 from the University of Greifswald, where he was appointed Professor of Anatomy. He worked widely across the fields of botany, zoology, anatomy and physiology. He investigated the anatomy of nerves, carried out studies of plant growth and was an early champion of the view that the cell is the basic structural unit of plants. In 1804, Karl Rudolphi, along with J.H.F.
Go to Profile#16668
Franz Leydig
1821 - 1908 (87 years)
Franz von Leydig, also Franz Leydig , was a German zoologist and comparative anatomist. Life Franz Leydig was born on 21 May 1821 in Rothenburg ob der Tauber . He was the only boy of three children born to Melchior Leydig, a Catholic and a minor public official, and Margareta, a Protestant. Leydig shared both his father's Catholic religion and hobbies: his father was a keen gardener and beekeeper. Leydig himself recalled later that those childhood interests began his lifelong concern with botany and zoology. At age 12, he acquired a simple microscope, which he used in the majority of his free ...
Go to Profile#16669
Ewald Hering
1834 - 1918 (84 years)
Karl Ewald Konstantin Hering was a German physiologist who did much research in color vision, binocular perception, eye movements, and hyperacuity. He proposed opponent color theory in 1892. Born in Alt-Gersdorf, Kingdom of Saxony, Hering studied at the University of Leipzig and became the first rector of the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague.
Go to Profile#16670
Lazzaro Spallanzani
1729 - 1799 (70 years)
Lazzaro Spallanzani was an Italian Catholic priest , biologist and physiologist who made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions, animal reproduction, and animal echolocation. His research on biogenesis paved the way for the downfall of the theory of spontaneous generation, a prevailing idea at the time that organisms develop from inanimate matters, though the final death blow to the idea was dealt by French scientist Louis Pasteur a century later.
Go to Profile#16671
Alexei Severtsov
1866 - 1936 (70 years)
Alexei Nikolaevich Severtsov was a Russian and Soviet evolutionary zoologist who worked on comparative anatomy and morphology. He was the son of the zoologist Nikolai Severtzov. He studied the evolution of vertebrates and established an institute for evolutionary morphology which is now named after him as the AN Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution. He introduced various concepts of phyloembryology and evolutionary physiology.
Go to Profile#16672
Viktor Hamburger
1900 - 2001 (101 years)
Viktor Hamburger was a German-American professor and embryologist. His collaboration with neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini resulted in the discovery of nerve growth factor. In 1951 he and Howard Hamilton published a standardized stage series to describe chicken embryo development, now called the Hamburger-Hamilton stages. He was considered "one of the most influential neuroembryologists of the twentieth century".
Go to Profile#16673
Alexander Gurwitsch
1874 - 1954 (80 years)
Alexander Gavrilovich Gurwitsch Early life Gurwitch was the son of a Jewish provincial lawyer; his family was artistic and intellectual, and he decided to study medicine only after failing to gain a place studying painting. After research in the laboratory of Karl Wilhelm von Kupffer, he began to specialise in embryology, publishing his first paper on the biochemistry of gastrulation in 1895. He graduated from Munich University in 1897, having studied under A. A. Boehm.
Go to Profile#16674
Marcel Florkin
1900 - 1979 (79 years)
Marcel Florkin was a Belgian biochemist. Florkin was graduated as a Doctor in Medicine and became a professor of biochemistry at the University of Liège. In 1951, he was the initiator of the Belgian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Together with Christian de Duve, and others, he wrote a proposal for the statutes which was adopted in 1952, on the first general meeting. In 1944, he published a book concerning biochemical evolution, in which he explained the relevance of evolution for understanding differences in metabolism and chemical makeup between different types of organisms. In later years he applied the principles of biosemiotics on biochemistry.
Go to Profile#16675
Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville
1777 - 1850 (73 years)
Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville was a French zoologist and anatomist. Life Blainville was born at Arques, near Dieppe. As a young man he went to Paris to study art, but ultimately devoted himself to natural history. He attracted the attention of Georges Cuvier, for whom he occasionally substituted as lecturer at the Collège de France and at the Athenaeum Club, London. In 1812 he was aided by Cuvier in acquiring the position of assistant professor of anatomy and zoology in the Faculty of Sciences at Paris. Eventually, relations between the two men soured, a situation that ended in open enmi...
Go to Profile#16676
Hermann Schlegel
1804 - 1884 (80 years)
Hermann Schlegel was a German ornithologist, herpetologist and ichthyologist. Early life and education Schlegel was born at Altenburg, the son of a brassfounder. His father collected butterflies, which stimulated Schlegel's interest in natural history. The discovery, by chance, of a buzzard's nest led him to the study of birds, and a meeting with Christian Ludwig Brehm.
Go to Profile#16677
Josef Hyrtl
1810 - 1894 (84 years)
Josef Hyrtl was an Austrian anatomist. Biography Hyrtl was born at Kismarton, Hungary . He began his medical studies in Vienna in 1831, having received his preliminary education in his native town. His parents were poor, and he had to find funds to defray the expenses of his medical education. In 1833, while he was still a student, he was named prosector in anatomy, and the preparations which this position required him to make for teaching purposes attracted the attention of professors as well as students. His graduation thesis, Antiquitates anatomicæ rariores, was a prophecy of the work to which his life was to be devoted.
Go to Profile#16678
Michael Heidelberger
1888 - 1991 (103 years)
Michael Heidelberger was an American immunologist, often regarded as the father of modern immunology. He and Oswald Avery showed that the polysaccharides of pneumococcus are antigens, enabling him to show that antibodies are proteins. He spent most his early career at Columbia University and comparable time in his later years on the faculty of New York University. In 1934 and 1936 he received the Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1967 he received the National Medal of Science, and then he earned the Lasker Award for basic medical research in 1953 and again in 1978. His papers are held at the Nationa...
Go to Profile#16679
Wilhelm Pfeffer
1845 - 1920 (75 years)
Wilhelm Friedrich Philipp Pfeffer was a German botanist and plant physiologist born in Grebenstein. Academic career He studied chemistry and pharmacy at the University of Göttingen, where his instructors included Friedrich Wöhler , William Eduard Weber and Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig . Afterwards, he furthered his education at the universities of Marburg and Berlin. At Berlin, he studied under Alexander Braun and was an assistant to Nathanael Pringsheim . Later on, he served as an assistant to Julius von Sachs at Würzburg,
Go to Profile#16680
Adolf Portmann
1897 - 1982 (85 years)
Adolf Portmann was a Swiss zoologist. Born in Basel, Switzerland, he studied zoology at the University of Basel and worked later in Geneva, Munich, Paris and Berlin, but mainly in marine biology laboratories in France and Helgoland.
Go to Profile#16681
Eugen Bleuler
1857 - 1939 (82 years)
Paul Eugen Bleuler was a Swiss psychiatrist and humanist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness. He coined several psychiatric terms including "schizophrenia", "schizoid", "autism", depth psychology and what Sigmund Freud called "Bleuler's happily chosen term ambivalence".
Go to Profile#16682
Johann Wilhelm Meigen
1764 - 1845 (81 years)
Johann Wilhelm Meigen was a German entomologist famous for his pioneering work on Diptera. Life Early years Meigen was born in Solingen, the fifth of eight children of Johann Clemens Meigen and Sibylla Margaretha Bick. His parents, though not poor, were not wealthy either. They ran a small shop in Solingen. His paternal grandparents, however, owned an estate and hamlet with twenty houses. Adding to the rental income, Meigen's grandfather was a farmer and a guild mastercutler in Solingen.
Go to Profile#16683
Antoine Laurent de Jussieu
1748 - 1836 (88 years)
Antoine Laurent de Jussieu was a French botanist, notable as the first to publish a natural classification of flowering plants; much of his system remains in use today. His classification was based on an extended unpublished work by his uncle, the botanist Bernard de Jussieu.
Go to Profile#16684
Giovanni Battista Morgagni
1682 - 1771 (89 years)
Giovanni Battista Morgagni was an Italian anatomist, generally regarded as the father of modern anatomical pathology, who taught thousands of medical students from many countries during his 56 years as Professor of Anatomy at the University of Padua.
Go to Profile#16685
Elias Magnus Fries
1794 - 1878 (84 years)
Elias Magnus Fries was a Swedish mycologist and botanist. He is sometimes called the "Linnaeus of Mycology". In his works he described and assigned botanical names to hundreds of fungus and lichen species, many of which remain authoritative today.
Go to Profile#16686
William Sharpey
1802 - 1880 (78 years)
William Sharpey FRS FRSE LLD was a Scottish anatomist and physiologist. Sharpey became the outstanding exponent of experimental biology and is described as the "father of British physiology". Early life Sharpey was born in Arbroath on 1 April 1802, the youngest son of the five children Mary Balfour and Henry Sharpy , a shipowner from Folkestone who died before Sharpey was born.
Go to Profile#16687
Ray Lankester
1847 - 1929 (82 years)
Sir Edwin Ray Lankester was a British zoologist. An invertebrate zoologist and evolutionary biologist, he held chairs at University College London and Oxford University. He was the third Director of the Natural History Museum, London, and was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society.
Go to Profile#16688
James Francis Stephens
1792 - 1852 (60 years)
James Francis Stephens was an English entomologist and naturalist. He is known for his 12 volume Illustrations of British Entomology and the Manual of British Beetles . Early life Stephens was born in Shoreham-by-Sea and studied at Christ's Hospital. His father was a navy captain William James Stephens and his mother was Mary Peck . He went to school at the Blue Coat School, Hertford and later at Christ's Hospital, London. He was then sent to study under Shute Barrington , the bishop of Durham in 1800. He left in 1807 and worked as a clerk in the Admiralty office, Somerset House, from 1807 ...
Go to Profile#16689
Robert Remak
1815 - 1865 (50 years)
Robert Remak was a Polish embryologist, physiologist, and neurologist, born in Posen, Prussia, who discovered that the origin of cells was by the division of pre-existing cells. as well as several other key discoveries.
Go to Profile#16690
Philippe Pinel
1745 - 1826 (81 years)
Philippe Pinel was a French physician, precursor of psychiatry and incidentally a zoologist. He was instrumental in the development of a more humane psychological approach to the custody and care of psychiatric patients, referred to today as moral therapy. He worked for the abolition of the shackling of mental patients by chains and, more generally, for the humanisation of their treatment. He also made notable contributions to the classification of mental disorders and has been described by some as "the father of modern psychiatry".
Go to Profile#16691
Charles Henry Gilbert
1859 - 1928 (69 years)
Charles Henry Gilbert was a pioneer ichthyologist and fishery biologist of particular significance to natural history of the western United States. He collected and studied fishes from Central America north to Alaska and described many new species. Later he became an expert on Pacific salmon and was a noted conservationist of the Pacific Northwest. He is considered by many as the intellectual founder of American fisheries biology. He was one of the 22 "pioneer professors" of Stanford University.
Go to Profile#16692
Alexander Braun
1805 - 1877 (72 years)
Alexander Carl Heinrich Braun was a German botanist from Regensburg, Bavaria. His research centered on the morphology of plants. Biography He studied botany in Heidelberg, Paris and Munich. In 1833 he began teaching botany at the Polytechnic School of Karlsruhe, staying there until 1846. Afterwards he was a professor of botany in Freiburg , Giessen and at the University of Berlin , where he remained until 1877. While in Berlin, he was also director of the botanical garden. In 1852, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#16693
George Romanes
1848 - 1894 (46 years)
George John Romanes FRS was a Canadian-Scots evolutionary biologist and physiologist who laid the foundation of what he called comparative psychology, postulating a similarity of cognitive processes and mechanisms between humans and other animals.
Go to Profile#16694
Otto Folin
1867 - 1934 (67 years)
Otto Knut Olof Folin was a Swedish-born American chemist who is best known for his groundbreaking work at Harvard University on practical micromethods for the determination of the constituents of protein-free blood filtrates and the discovery of creatine phosphate in muscles.
Go to Profile#16695
Philipp Franz von Siebold
1796 - 1866 (70 years)
Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold was a German physician, botanist and traveler. He achieved prominence by his studies of Japanese flora and fauna and the introduction of Western medicine in Japan. He was the father of the first female Japanese doctor educated in Western medicine, Kusumoto Ine.
Go to Profile#16696
Victor Hensen
1835 - 1924 (89 years)
Christian Andreas Victor Hensen was a German zoologist and marine biologist . He coined the term plankton and laid the foundation for biological oceanography and quantitative studies. Family Hensen was born in the town of Schleswig where his father ran a school for the deaf and dumb. His mother Henriette Caroline Amalie was the daughter of physician Carl Ferdinand Suadicani who founded an asylum in Schleswig. Hensen had eight sisters and five brothers including from his father's first marriage.
Go to Profile#16697
Albert L. Lehninger
1917 - 1986 (69 years)
Albert Lester Lehninger was an American biochemist in the field of bioenergetics. He made fundamental contributions to the current understanding of metabolism at a molecular level. In 1948, he discovered, with Eugene P. Kennedy, that mitochondria are the site of oxidative phosphorylation in eukaryotes, which ushered in the modern study of energy transduction. He is the author of a number of classic texts, including: Biochemistry, The Mitochondrion, Bioenergetics and, most notably, his series Principles of Biochemistry. This last is a widely used text for introductory biochemistry courses at ...
Go to Profile#16698
Sahachiro Hata
1873 - 1938 (65 years)
Sahachirō Hata was a prominent Japanese bacteriologist who researched the bubonic plague under Kitasato Shibasaburō and assisted in developing the Arsphenamine drug in 1909 in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich.
Go to Profile#16699
Mikhail Tsvet
1872 - 1919 (47 years)
Mikhail Semyonovich Tsvet was a Russian-Italian botanist who invented chromatography. His last name is Russian for "colour" and is also the root word of "flower." Biography Mikhail Tsvet was born 14 May 1872 in Asti, Italy. His mother was Italian, and his father was a Russian official. His mother died soon after his birth, and he was raised in Geneva, Switzerland. He received his BS degree from the Department of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Geneva in 1893. However, he decided to dedicate himself to botany and received his PhD degree in 1896 for his work on cell physiology. He moved to Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1896 because his father was recalled from the foreign service.
Go to Profile#16700
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
1860 - 1948 (88 years)
Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson CB FRS FRSE was a Scottish biologist, mathematician and classics scholar. He was a pioneer of mathematical and theoretical biology, travelled on expeditions to the Bering Strait and held the position of Professor of Natural History at University College, Dundee for 32 years, then at St Andrews for 31 years. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, was knighted, and received the Darwin Medal and the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal.
Go to Profile