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,
#16801
Bertram Whittier Wells
1884 - 1978 (94 years)
Bertram Whittier Wells was an American botanist and ecologist active in North Carolina. His most influential work was Natural Gardens of North Carolina . During his long and active life, B. W. Wells was keenly interested in the study and preservation of North Carolina's unique landscape. He spent time studying the Big Savannah in North Carolina's Pender County, a spot he made famous in his publications on "natural gardens." Wells also, unsuccessfully, worked to save the Big Savannah from development. In 2002, a similar ecological site was dedicated to Wells's memory. Wells's concern for th...
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Harald Lindberg
1871 - 1963 (92 years)
Harald Lindberg was a Finnish botanist of Swedish parentage. He was the son of botanist Sextus Otto Lindberg . He studied natural sciences at the University of Helsinki, later spending several years working as a secondary school teacher. In 1910 he obtained his PhD at Helsinki with a dissertation on Alchemilla vulgaris. Afterwards, he served as first custodian at the botanical museum in Helsinki, where he remained until his retirement in 1941.
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Cesare T. Lombroso
#16804
Harry Luman Russell
1866 - 1954 (88 years)
Harry Luman Russell was an American bacteriologist and educator. Biography Rusell was born in Poynette, Wisconsin, the son of country doctor E. Fred Russell and his wife Lucinda E. Waldron, he attended Poynette High School before matriculating to the University of Wisconsin in 1884. Following his graduation with a B.S in 1888, he undertook graduate studies in Biology and received his M.S. in 1890. He went to Europe for further study under Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur; first at the University of Berlin, then at the Zoological Station in Naples, and finally at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Returning to the U.S., he attended Johns Hopkins University, where he was awarded a Ph.D.
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Robert Almer Harper
1862 - 1946 (84 years)
Robert Almer Harper was an American botanist. The younger brother of Edward Thompson Harper, Robert was born in Le Claire, Iowa to Congressional Minister Almer Harper and Eunice Thompson. The family moved to Port Byron, Illinois in 1863, where Robert attended local schools. He matriculated to Oberlin College, his father's alma mater, where he graduated with a A. B. in 1886. During the Fall of 1886 he performed graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, then he was professor of Greek and Latin at Gates College in Neligh, Nebraska during 1886–88.
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Ethel Ronzoni Bishop
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Ethel Ronzoni Bishop was an American biochemist and physiologist. Early life and education Ethel Ronzoni was born in California. She earned her BS degree from Mills College in 1913, her Master's from Columbia University in 1914, and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1923.
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Malcolm Laurie
1866 - 1932 (66 years)
Malcolm Laurie FRSE FLS was a Scottish zoologist and palaeontologist. Biography He was born in Brunstane House south of Portobello, Edinburgh on 27 February 1866, the son of Catherine Ann Hibburd and her husband Simon Somerville Laurie. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy 1876 to 1880. He studied science, first at the University of Edinburgh then at the University of Cambridge where he graduated with a BA in 1889. He returned to Edinburgh for postgraduate studies and gained his doctorate in 1894.
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Malcolm Wilson
1882 - 1960 (78 years)
Malcolm Wilson FRSE FLS was a 20th-century Scottish botanist and mycologist. He was an expert on the identification of dry rot and its remediation. Life Wilson studied science at the University of London, graduating with a BSc in 1905. In 1909 he became Senior Demonstrator in Botany at Imperial College, London. He gained a doctorate in 1911. He was created a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1910.
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Fredric Wertham
1895 - 1981 (86 years)
Fredric Wertham was a German-American psychiatrist and author. Wertham had an early reputation as a progressive psychiatrist who treated poor black patients at his Lafargue Clinic at a time of heightened discrimination in urban mental health practice. Wertham also authored a definitive textbook on the brain, and his institutional stressor findings were cited when courts overturned multiple segregation statutes, most notably in Brown v. Board of Education.
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Myron L. Bender
1924 - 1988 (64 years)
Myron Lee Bender was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He obtained his B.S. and his Ph.D. from Purdue University. The latter was under the direction of Henry B. Hass. After postdoctoral research under Paul D. Barlett , and Frank H. Westheimer , he spent one year as a faculty member at the University of Connecticut. Thereafter, he was a professor of Chemistry at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1951, and then at Northwestern University in 1960. He worked primarily in the study of reaction mechanisms and the biochemistry of enzyme action. Myron L. Bender demonstrated the two-step mechanism of...
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Eduard Reichenow
1883 - 1960 (77 years)
Johann Eduard Reichenow was a German protozoologist. He was the son of ornithologist Anton Reichenow. Biography Reichenow was born in Berlin. He studied natural sciences in Heidelberg, Berlin and Munich, and received his doctorate in 1908. After graduation he conducted research of protozoans at the Imperial Health Ministry in Berlin. From 1913 onward, he served as a government zoologist in Kamerun, where he did studies on the biology of the malaria pathogen. From 1916 to 1919 he conducted research at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, and in 1921 was appointed director of the protozoology department at the Schiffs- und Tropenkrankheiten in Hamburg.
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Giulio Cesare Casseri
1552 - 1616 (64 years)
Giulio Cesare Casseri , also written as Giulio Casser, Giulio Casserio of Piacenza or Latinized as Iulius Casserius Placentinus, Giulio Casserio, was an Italian anatomist. He is best known for the books Tabulae anatomicae and De Vocis Auditusque Organis . He was the first to describe the Circle of Willis.
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Domingo Castillejo
1744 - 1786 (42 years)
Domingo Castillejo or Castillejos was a Spanish botanist, surgeon, and professor. From 1770 to 1786, he served as a professor of materia medica and botany at the Royal Naval College of Surgery in Cádiz, during which time his studies were devoted to the flora of the southern Iberian Peninsula. Among the many positions he held during this time was Cádiz correspondent for the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid; in this position he received many new plants imported from the New World, and acclimatized them for distribution to other nurseries throughout Spain and the Canary Islands.
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Jan Tur
1875 - 1942 (67 years)
Jan Feliks Tur was a Polish zoologist who specialized in embryology, mutagenesis, and teratology at the University of Warsaw. His family belonged to the Korczak clan of nobles. Tur was born at Radziwiliszki near Grażun to landowner Jarosław Daniel and Maria née Rymkiewicz. After schooling in Vilnius and Częstochowa, he studied zoology at the Warsaw Imperial University under Pavel Mitrofanov and became his assistant in 1899. After receiving a doctorate from the Jagiellonian University on avian teratology under Józef Nusbaum-Hilarowicz he went on internships to Villefranche, Roscoff, Saratov, Vimereux and Heligoland.
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Tatiana Krasnoselskaia
1884 - 1950 (66 years)
Tatiana Krasnoselskaia was a botanist specializing in plant physiology from the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union. Life Tatiana Abramovna Krasnoselskaia was born on 1 January 1884 in St Petersburg, capital of the Russian Empire. She studied physics and mathematics in the Bestuzhev Courses, graduating in 1904. She was an assistant professor at the St Petersburg Agricultural Courses and then became an assistant professor at the Bestuzhev Courses from 1909 to 1914. While teaching Krasnoselskaia earned her M.A. at Saint Petersburg Imperial University in 1912. Two years later she moved to...
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James Wilson
1795 - 1856 (61 years)
James Wilson of Woodville FRSE was a 19th-century Scottish zoologist. Life Wilson was born at Paisley on 20 November 1795, the youngest son of Margaret Sym and John Wilson , a gauze manufacturer. His father died during his first year, after which the family moved to Edinburgh, where he was educated. In 1811, he began to study for the law at the University of Edinburgh.
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Elizabeth C. Miller
1920 - 1987 (67 years)
Elizabeth Cavert Miller was an American biochemist, known for fundamental research into the chemical mechanism of cancer carcinogenesis, working closely with her husband James A. Miller. Biography Miller was the daughter of an economist at the Federal Land Bank in Minneapolis. She studied biochemistry at the University of Minnesota . In 1945 she received her doctorate under Carl Baumann as a Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Scholar. As a postgraduate, she worked at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she and her husband James A. Miller studied chemical carcinogenesis.
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Louis Hermann Pammel
1862 - 1931 (69 years)
Louis Hermann Pammel was an American botanist, conservationist, and professor of botany. Biography Louis Hermann Pammel was the second of six children and the oldest son of his parents who were Prussian immigrants to Wisconsin. In 1885 he graduated with a bachelor's degree in agriculture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where William Trelease taught him in courses in ecology, cryptogamic botany, and botanical taxonomy. In July 1885 he became employed in a Chicago seed company. In October 1885 he became a medical student at Philadelphia's Hahnemann Medical College. However, he soon accepted an offer to work as an assistant to the botanist William G.
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Bernhard Walthard
1897 - 1992 (95 years)
Bernhard Walthard was a Swiss pathologist and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bern. In 1922 he earned his doctorate at the University of Zurich with a thesis on liver function tests during pregnancy sub partu, in childbirth and in eclampsia. In 1932, he became lecturer at the University of Bern, in 1940 associate professor, and in 1946 full professor. He was also director of the Institute of Pathology of the same university.
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Elzada Clover
1897 - 1980 (83 years)
Elzada Clover was an American botanist who was the first to catalog plant life in the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. She and Lois Jotter became the first two women to raft the entire length of the Grand Canyon.
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Gert Bonnier
1890 - 1961 (71 years)
Gert Bonnier was a Swedish geneticist and Drosophila researcher. He was a professor in the zoology department at Stockholm College. Family life A member of the Bonnier family, Bonnier was the third of four sons of Karl Otto Bonnier, a publisher who served as leader of the Albert Bonniers förlag publishing house. Unlike his three brothers, Gert did not work at his father's publishing house.
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Richard Kräusel
1890 - 1966 (76 years)
Richard Oswald Karl Kräusel was a German paleobotanist. He studied botany at the University of Breslau as a pupil of Ferdinand Albin Pax, and in 1913 received his doctorate with the thesis Beiträge zur kenntnis der Holzer aus der schlesischen Braunkohle . From 1920 to 1952 he worked as a lecturer and professor at the University of Frankfurt. He was also associated with the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, where he served as head of the department of paleobotany. During World War II his collections of fossil plants were stored in a nearby castle for safekeeping; unfortunately t...
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Félicien Chapuis
1824 - 1879 (55 years)
Félicien Chapuis was a Belgian doctor and entomologist. He specialised in Coleoptera and finished the text of Genera des coléoptères by Théodore Lacordaire when Lacordaire died. He wrote:1865 des platypides. H. Dessain, Liège.1874. Histoire Naturelle des Insectes. Genera des Coléoptères. Tome 10. Libraire Encyclopédique de Roret, Paris, 455 pp., pls. 111–124. 1875. Naturelle des Insectes. Genera des ColéoptèresTome 11. Libraire Encyclopédique de Roret, Paris, 420 pp., pls. 125–130. 1876. Histoire Naturelle des Insectes. Genera des Coléoptères. Tome 12. Libraire Encyclopédique de Roret, Paris, 424 pp., pls.
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Hans Kuypers
1925 - 1989 (64 years)
Henricus Gerardus Jacobus Maria Kuypers , usually more simply known as Hans Kuypers, was a Dutch neuroscientist. He was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, studied medicine at Leiden University and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1952 by Zurich University for his work on neuroanatomy.
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Nikolay Stoyanov
1883 - 1968 (85 years)
Nikolai Andreev Stojanov was an academic and botanist who was among the founders of botany in Bulgaria. He was for many years professor at Sofia University, the founder and first director of the Institute of Botany of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences .
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Vladimir Arnoldi
1871 - 1924 (53 years)
Vladimir Mitrofanovich Arnoldi was a Russian professor of biology. He was a Corresponding Member of Russian Academy of Sciences and scientifically listed a number of valuable plants in Malaysia. He lived in the Russian city of Tambov for much of his life. His son Konstantin Arnoldi became a prominent entomologist.
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Winifred Goldring
1888 - 1971 (83 years)
Winifred Goldring , was an American paleontologist whose work included a description of stromatolites, as well as the study of Devonian crinoids. She was the first woman in the nation to be appointed as a State Paleontologist.
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Agnes Claypole Moody
1870 - 1954 (84 years)
Agnes Mary Claypole Moody was an American zoologist and professor of natural science. Early life and education Agnes Mary Claypole Moody was born in Bristol, England to Jane and Edward Waller Claypole. She had a twin sister, Edith Jane Claypole , who was also a biologist. She attended Buchtel College, and in 1894 she attended Cornell University for her master's degree. She completed doctoral work at the University of Chicago in 1896.
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Thomas Lauth
1758 - 1826 (68 years)
Thomas Lauth was a French anatomist. He was the father of anatomist Ernest Alexandre Lauth . Background He studied philosophy, mathematics, science and medicine at the University of Strasbourg, receiving his doctorate in 1781. After graduation, he continued his medical studies in Paris with Pierre-Joseph Desault , and in London with John Hunter . Following his return to Strasbourg he worked as an obstetrical adjunct. In 1785 he was appointed a full professor of anatomy and surgery in Strasbourg. In 1794, with the creation of the Ecole de Santé, his post became the chair of anatomy and physiol...
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Wilhelm Krause
1833 - 1910 (77 years)
Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Krause was a German anatomist born in Hanover. He was the son of anatomist Karl Friedrich Theodor Krause . Krause studied at Göttingen, where he became member of Burschenschaft Hannovera . In 1854 he earned his medical doctorate, and later became an associate professor at the University of Göttingen. In 1892 he was appointed head of the Anatomical Institute Laboratory in Berlin.
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Per Erland Berg Wendelbo
1927 - 1981 (54 years)
Per Erland Berg Wendelbo was a Norwegian botanist. He was born in Oslo, a son of physician Per Kristian Lund Wendelbo and textile designer Sigrun Berg, and grandson of judge and politician Paal Berg. He was appointed professor of botany at the University of Gothenburg from 1965 to 1981, and was a specialist on Southwestern Asian flora. Among his publications are The Ariamehr Botanical Garden Handbook from 1974 and Tulips and Irises of Iran and their relatives from 1977.
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Franz Xaver Heller
1778 - 1840 (62 years)
Franz Xaver Heller was a German physician and botanist. He studied medicine at the University of Würzburg, graduating in 1800 with doctorates in medicine and surgery. In 1803 he became an associate professor at Würzburg, and two years later was appointed a full professor of botany. In 1828 he was named rector of the university. During the same year, he became a corresponding member of the Medico-Botanical Society of London.
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Aven Nelson
1859 - 1951 (92 years)
Aven Nelson was an American botanist who specialized in plants of the Rocky Mountains. He was one of the founding professors of the University of Wyoming, where he taught for 55 years as professor and served as president . He served as president of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists and Botanical Society of America.
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Georg Kükenthal
1864 - 1955 (91 years)
Georg Kükenthal was a German pastor and botanist who specialized in the field of caricology. He was the brother of zoologist Willy Kükenthal . From 1882 to 1885 he studied theology at the universities of Tübingen and Halle. He worked as a pastor in Grub am Forst, and later in Coburg. In 1913 he received an honorary degree from the University of Breslau.
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Bernard Beryl Brodie
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
Bernard Beryl Brodie was a founding scientist in the area of biochemical and neurochemical pharmacology whose work in the 1940s and 1950s had great impact. He was a major figure in the fields of drug metabolism and drug therapy, studying how the absorption and interactions of drugs in the body. Brodie helped to found and lead the Laboratory of Chemical Pharmacology at the National Heart Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, one of the National Institutes of Health. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
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Leopold Hartley Grindon
1818 - 1904 (86 years)
Leopold Hartley Grindon was an English educator and botanist, and a pioneer in adult education. His plant collection and botanical drawings and writings formed a major asset of the herbarium at Manchester Museum, when it was founded in 1860.
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Wilton Ivie
1907 - 1969 (62 years)
Vaine Wilton Ivie was an American arachnologist, who described hundreds of new species and many new genera of spiders, both under his own name and in collaboration with Ralph Vary Chamberlin. He was employed by the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He also was a supporter of the Technocracy movement.
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Effie A. Southworth
1860 - 1947 (87 years)
Effie Almira Southworth Spalding , was an American botanist and mycologist, and the first woman plant pathologist hired by the United States Department of Agriculture . Her most important discovery was the 1887 identification of the fungus Colletotrichum gossypii as the cause of cotton cankers, a disease which killed thousands of acres of cotton and was a major economic threat. She taught botany at several institutions, worked at the Desert Botanical Laboratory with her husband, and established the Botany Department Herbarium at the University of Southern California.
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Isaac Ginsburg
1886 - 1975 (89 years)
Isaac Ginsburg was a Lithuanian-born American ichthyologist. Biography Early life Ginsburg was born in Lithuania in 1886. He immigrated to the United States during his childhood. He attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he studied ichthyology.
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William A. Wimsatt
1917 - 1985 (68 years)
William A. Wimsatt was professor of Zoology and Chairman of the Department of Zoology at Cornell University. From 1945 until 1960, Wimsatt taught courses in histology and embryology in the College of Arts and Sciences and also in the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine. He was well known for his pioneering research on the interrelationships of hibernation and reproduction and the biology of bats.
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Philip Eggleton
1903 - 1954 (51 years)
Philip Eggleton FRSE was a British biochemist, physiologist, lecturer, and , co-discoverer of Phosphagens. Life Eggleton was born at Kingston-on-Thames on 19 March 1903. He attended the Tiffin School there before going to the University of London graduating BSc in 1922 and receiving his doctorate in 1930.
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Oscar von Schüppel
1837 - 1881 (44 years)
Oscar von Schüppel was a German pathologist. He studied anatomy at the University of Leipzig, later relocating to Tübingen, where in 1869 he was appointed professor of pathological anatomy. In 1876/77 he served as university rector.
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Anna Vickers
1852 - 1906 (54 years)
Anna Vickers was a marine algologist and plant collector known principally for her work on algae of the Antilles and the Canary Islands. Biography Anna Vickers was born on 28 June 1852 in Bordeaux, France, though it is likely that her father was British. In 1879–80, she visited Australia and New Zealand with her family, traveling widely and becoming interested in the Maori language. In 1883 she published a monograph about these travels, Voyage en Australie et en Novelle-Zélande. Topics she touched on range from word derivations in the Maori language to the ferns and algae of south Australia. ...
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Karl Brandt
1854 - 1931 (77 years)
Andreas Heinrich Karl Brandt was a German zoologist and marine biologist. He studied natural sciences in Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1877 at the University of Halle. Following graduation he served as an assistant to Emil Du Bois-Reymond at the physiological institute of the University of Berlin. From 1882 to 1885 he worked at the zoological station in Naples, and in 1885 obtained his habilitation from the University of Königsberg under the direction of Carl Chun .
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Martin Bernhardt
1844 - 1915 (71 years)
Martin Bernhardt was a German neuropathologist. Bernhardt was a native of Potsdam. His family was Jewish. In 1867 he received his medical doctorate at the University of Berlin, where he was a student of Rudolf Virchow and Ludwig Traube . Subsequently, he became an assistant to Ernst Viktor von Leyden at the university clinic at Königsberg, and afterwards worked at the Berlin-Charité under Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal . After military service in the Franco-Prussian War, he returned to Berlin as a specialist in neuropathology, and in 1882 attained the title of "professor extraordinarius".
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Michael Graham
1898 - 1972 (74 years)
Michael Graham CMG OBE was a British fisheries scientist, author, and ecologist. He was the director of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food fisheries laboratory in Lowestoft , now known as the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science . His classic book, The Fish Gate, published in 1943, paints a picture of the near-collapse of the British fishing industry through overfishing that occurred before both the First and the Second World Wars.
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Paul Charles Dubois
1848 - 1918 (70 years)
Paul Charles Dubois was a Swiss neuropathologist who was a native of La Chaux-de-Fonds. Dubois studied medicine at the University of Bern, and in 1876 was a general practitioner of medicine in Bern. He was interested in psychosomatic medicine, eventually gaining a reputation as a highly regarded psychotherapist. In 1902 he became a professor of neuropathology at Bern. Dubois was influenced by the writings of German psychiatrist Johann Christian August Heinroth .
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Sheina Marshall
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Sheina Macalister Marshall was a Scottish marine biologist who dedicated her life to the study of plant and animal plankton. She was an authority on the copepod Calanus. She worked at the Marine Biological Station at Millport, Cumbrae in Scotland from 1922-1964.
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Nikolaus Ager
1568 - 1634 (66 years)
Nikolaus Ager, name also spelled Nicolas Ager and sometimes referred to as Agerius was a French physician and botanist born in Alsace. He was the author of the treatise "De Anima Vegetativa" . He studied medicine in Basel, subsequently obtaining doctorates in medicine and philosophy in Strasbourg. In 1618 he became a professor of medicine and botany at Strasbourg. During his career, he worked closely with famed botanists Johann and Gaspard Bauhin.
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Maximilien Chaudoir
1816 - 1881 (65 years)
Maximilien Chaudoir, or Maximilien, baron de Chaudoir, was a Russian entomologist. He was a specialist in Coleoptera and in particular the Carabidae. His Cicindelidae are conserved by the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris. His Carabidae were acquired by Charles Oberthür , then given to the same museum. He wrote Mémoire sur la famille des Carabiques, 6 volumes commencing 1848.
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