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,
#16851
Fulgenzio Vitman
1728 - 1806 (78 years)
Fulgenzio Vitman was an Italian clergyman and botanist. From 1763 to 1774 he taught botany at the University of Pavia, where in 1773 he founded the University Botanical Garden. In 1774, he developed the Brera Botanical Garden in Milan out of a former Jesuit garden, under the direction of Maria Theresa of Austria.
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Reginald Ernest Moreau
1897 - 1970 (73 years)
Reginald Ernest Moreau, , was an English civil servant who worked as an accountant in Africa and later contributed to ornithology. He made studies of clutch size in nesting birds, compared the life-histories of birds in different latitudes and was a pioneer in the introduction of quantitative approaches to the study of birds. He was also a long time editor of the ornithological journal Ibis.
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John Gray McKendrick
1841 - 1926 (85 years)
John Gray McKendrick FRS FRSE FRCPE LLD was a distinguished Scottish physiologist. He was born and studied in Aberdeen, Scotland, and served as Regius Professor of Physiology at the University of Glasgow from 1876 to 1906. He was co-founder of the Physiological Society.
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Daniel Danielopolu
1884 - 1955 (71 years)
Daniel Danielopolu was a Romanian physiologist, clinician and pharmacologist. In 1938, he was elected an honorary member of the Romanian Academy. Notes
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Filippo De Filippi
1814 - 1867 (53 years)
Filippo De Filippi was an Italian doctor, traveler and zoologist. Career Filippo De Filippi was born in Pavia. In 1836, he received his medical degree from the University of Pavia, where afterwards he worked as an assistant to the chair of zoology. From 1840 he worked at the museum of natural history in Milan. In 1848 he succeeded Giuseppe Gené as professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the University of Turin.
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Henry Baldwin Ward
1897 - 1945 (48 years)
Henry Baldwin Ward was an American zoologist and parasitologist. He was the founder and first president of The American Society of Parasitologists, and founder-editor of the Journal of Parasitology.
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Yoshio Abe
1891 - 1960 (69 years)
Yoshio Abe, from Yamagata Prefecture, was a professor of zoology at which was amalgamated into Hiroshima University by the enactment of National School Establishment Law and the above-mentioned Hiroshima University after the amalgamation.
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Sidnie Manton
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Sidnie Milana Manton was an influential British zoologist. She is known for making advances in the field of functional morphology. She is regarded as being one of the most outstanding zoologists of the twentieth century.
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Ralph Tate
1840 - 1901 (61 years)
Ralph Tate was a British-born botanist and geologist, who was later active in Australia. Early life Tate was born at Alnwick in Northumberland, the son of Thomas Turner Tate , a teacher of mathematics and science, and his wife Frances . He was nephew to George Tate , naturalist and archaeologist, an active member of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club. Tate was educated at the Cheltenham Training College and at the Royal School of Mines.
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Friedrich Wilhelm Zopf
1846 - 1909 (63 years)
Friedrich Wilhelm Zopf was a well-known German botanist and mycologist. He dedicated to his whole life with fungal biology, particularly in classification of fungi and dye production in fungi and lichens. Besides, his textbook on fungi called “Die pilze in morphologischer, physiologischer, biologischer und systematischer beziehung ” in 1890 was also an outstanding work on the subject for many decades. The unicellular achlorophic microalgae Prototheca zopfii is named after him because of his profound suggestions and contributions to Krüger's pioneering work in Prototheca. Thus, his numerous c...
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Sándor Jávorka
1883 - 1961 (78 years)
Sándor Jávorka was a Hungarian botanist. His birthplace was Hegybánya, then in the Kingdom of Hungary, now in Slovakia and now called Štiavnické Bane. He died in Budapest. Occasionally he has been referred to as Alexander Jávorka; the Hungarian style of his name is Jávorka Sándor.
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Hermann zu Solms-Laubach
1842 - 1915 (73 years)
Hermann zu Solms-Laubach, more precisely Hermann Maximilian Carl Ludwig Friedrich Graf zu Solms-Laubach was a German botanist. Life Count Solms-Laubach studied in Giessen, Berlin, Fribourg and Geneva. In 1868 he obtained habilitation at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. In 1872 he became an associate professor at the University of Strasbourg; in 1879 he was appointed professor and director of the botanical garden in Göttingen, and in 1888 in Strasbourg.
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Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker
1901 - 1957 (56 years)
Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker was a British phycologist, known for her research on the edible seaweed Porphyra laciniata , which led to a breakthrough for commercial cultivation. Kathleen Drew-Baker's scientific legacy is revered in Japan, where she has been named Mother of the Sea. Her work is celebrated each year on April 14. A monument to her was erected in 1963 at the Sumiyoshi shrine in Uto, Kumamoto, Japan.
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Peng Jiamu
1925 - 1980 (55 years)
Peng Jiamu was a Chinese biochemist and explorer. Biography Peng was born in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in 1935. He received a biology degree from Central University of China , graduating in 1947 and subsequently joined the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, where he studied and worked under Cao Tianqin. He joined several scientific expeditions to Xinjiang organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences , starting in 1956. On the expeditions, he catalogued species of flora and fauna and measured potassium accumulation in the Lop Nor desert.
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Anders Jahan Retzius
1742 - 1821 (79 years)
Anders Jahan Retzius was a Swedish chemist, botanist and entomologist. Biography Born in Kristianstad, he matriculated at Lund University in 1758, where he graduated as a filosofie magister in 1766. He also trained as an apothecary apprentice. He received the position of docent of chemistry at Lund in 1766, and of natural history in 1767. He became extraordinary professor of natural history in 1777, and thereafter held various chairs of natural history, economy and chemistry until his retirement in 1812. He died in Stockholm on 6 October 1821.
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James V. McConnell
1925 - 1990 (65 years)
James V. McConnell was an American biologist and animal psychologist. He is most known for his research on learning and memory transfer in planarians conducted in the 1950s and 1960s. McConnell also published several science fiction short stories in the mid-1950s.
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Friedrich J. Haberlandt
1826 - 1878 (52 years)
Friedrich J. Haberlandt was a professor of agriculture at the Hochschule fuer Bodenkultur in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He is best known for his book Die Sojabohne , which introduced soybean cultivation to Western and Central Europe.
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Pietro Rossi
1738 - 1804 (66 years)
Pietro Rossi was an Italian scientist and entomologist. Career Rossi's academic career was conducted at the University of Pisa, where he attained a doctorate in philosophy and medicine in 1759. He was then made a professor of logic in 1763, a position he held until 1801, when he finally received the chair for natural history with the special field "insectology", making him the world's first professor of entomology. His publications, particularly Fauna etrusca and Mantissa insectorum , are considered pioneer achievements of entomology and still possess scientific validity in the fields of taxonomy and biological nomenclature.
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Decio Vinciguerra
1856 - 1934 (78 years)
Decio Vinciguerra was an Italian physician and ichthyologist who for many years was Director of the Aquarium of Rome. Early years Decio Vinciguerra was born in Genoa on 23 May 1856. He studied at the University of Genoa, and in 1878 obtained a degree in Medicine and Surgery. Immediately after graduating he was appointed assistant to the Chair of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in the University of Genoa. He was naturally attracted to zoology, which he studied further, obtaining a doctorate degree. He became a botanist and a zoologist with particular interest in ichthyology.
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Albrecht Thaer
1752 - 1828 (76 years)
Albrecht Daniel Thaer was a German agronomist and a supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition. Biography Family and early life Albrecht Daniel Thaer was born in Celle, a neat little town in Hanover, on 14 May 1752. His father, Johann Friedrich Thaer, was physician to the Court, and born in Liebenwerda, in Saxony; his mother, Sophie Elisabeth, was the daughter of J. Saffe, receiver of rents and taxes of the district of Celle. Albert was the first born, and had three sisters, Christine, Albertine, and Wilhelmine, of which the first died in infancy, the second was married to Captain ...
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Wen-Pei Fang
1899 - 1983 (84 years)
Fang Wen-Pei , was a Chinese botanist, an expert on rhododendrons and on the Maple Family. He worked in the Institute of Botany, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences after graduating from Southeast University in Nanjing, China. Fang furthered his study at the University of Edinburgh in 1934 and received his PhD in 1937. In the same year, he returned to China and became a biology professor at Sichuan University until his death.
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Felix Jacob Marchand
1846 - 1928 (82 years)
Felix Jacob Marchand was a German pathologist born in Halle an der Saale. He studied medicine in Berlin, and later became an assistant at the pathological institute in Halle. In 1881 he became a professor of pathological anatomy in Giessen, and two years later garnered the same position at Marburg. In 1900 he succeeded pathologist Felix Victor Birch-Hirschfeld at the University of Leipzig.
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Nicolaus Kleinenberg
1842 - 1897 (55 years)
Nicolaus Kleinenberg was a Baltic German zoologist and evolutionary morphologist. He studied at the University of Jena under Ernst Haeckel, obtaining his doctorate for studies of embryo cleavage in Hydra. His later work Hydra - Eine anatomisch-entwicklungsgeschichtliche untersuchung, in English "An anatomical-evolutionary investigation of Hydra" is a classic, still quoted monograph which has implications for evolution theory.
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Thomas Moore
1821 - 1887 (66 years)
Thomas Moore was a British gardener and botanist. An expert on ferns and fern allies from the British Isles, he served as Curator of the Society of Apothecaries Garden from 1848 to 1887. In 1855 he authored The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland.
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Lucien Berland
1888 - 1962 (74 years)
Lucien Berland was a French entomologist and arachnologist Partial list of publications 1925 : Faune de France. 10, Hyménoptères vespiformes, I, Sphegidae, Pompilidae, Scoliidae, Sapygidae, Mutillidae1927 : « Les Araignées ubiquistes, ou à large répartition, et leurs moyens de dissémination », Compte rendu sommaire des séances de la Société de biogéographie, 23 : 65–67.1929 : Faune de France. 19, Hyménoptères vespiformes, II, Eumenidae, Vespidae, Masaridae, Bethylidae, Dryinidae, Embolemidae 1929 : « Araignées recueillies par Madame Pruvot aux îles Loyalty », Bulletin de la Société zoologique de France, LIV : 387–399.1929 : avec Léon Bertin , La Faune de la France.
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Andrei Krasnov
1862 - 1914 (52 years)
Andrei Nikolaevich Krasnov was a Russian Empire botanist who explored the plants of Turkestan, Altai, Nizhny Novgorod, Tian Shan and the Caucasus regions. He was a professor at the University of Kharkov. His major contribution was in phytogeography, identifying combinations of species found in different regions and contributing to the study of global vegetation patterns and their links to the Köppen climate classification.
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Jesse More Greenman
1867 - 1951 (84 years)
Jesse More Greenman was an American botanist. He specialized in tropical flora, with emphasis on plants from Mexico and Central America. He was an authority on the genus Senecio and noted for his work at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
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Carl Lange
1834 - 1900 (66 years)
Carl Georg Lange was a Danish physician who made contributions to the fields of neurology, psychiatry, and psychology. Born to a wealthy family in Vordingborg, Denmark, Lange attended medical school at the University of Copenhagen and graduated in 1859 with a reputation for brilliance. After publishing on the neurological pathologies of aphasia, bulbar palsy, tabes dorsalis, and pathologies of the spinal cord, he achieved world fame with his 1885 work "On Emotions: A Psycho-Physiological Study". In it, he posited that all emotions are developed from, and can be reduced to, physiological reactions to stimuli.
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Arnold Durig
1872 - 1961 (89 years)
Arnold Durig was an Austrian physiologist remembered for his investigations involving physiological and pathophysiological aspects of individuals exposed to high altitude conditions. He very probably served as the model for the "impartial person" in Sigmund Freud's polemic booklet "The Question of Lay Analysis" .
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Achille Guenée
1809 - 1880 (71 years)
Achille Guenée was a French lawyer and entomologist. Biography Achille Guenée was born in Chartres and died in Châteaudun. He was educated in Chartres, where he showed a very early interest in butterflies and was encouraged and taught by François de Villiers . He went to study law in Paris, then entered the “Bareau”. After the death of his only son, he lived at Châteaudun in Chatelliers. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Châteaudun was burned by the Prussians but Guénée's collections remained intact.
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Teiso Esaki
1899 - 1957 (58 years)
was a Japanese entomologist. He authored numerous texts and was one of the founders of entomology in Japan, responsible for training a generation of Japanese entomologists, and founding the journal Zephyrus. He published numerous papers on the insects of Micronesia and was especially interested in aquatic insects and erected the family Helotrephidae along with W.E. China.
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Georg Wilhelm Franz Wenderoth
1774 - 1861 (87 years)
Georg Wilhelm Franz Wenderoth was a German pharmacist and botanist. Initially trained as a pharmacist, he was employed for a few years at the Rathsapotheke in Schweinfurt, where his free time was spent on botanical excursions in the vicinity of the city. From 1796 he studied medicine and natural sciences at the University of Marburg, obtaining his habilitation in pharmacology and botany in 1806. Afterwards, he taught classes in physics, chemistry and botany at Rinteln. In 1810 he returned to Marburg as a professor of botany, distinguishing himself with work done at the Alter Botanischer Garte...
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Evelyn M. Anderson
1899 - 1985 (86 years)
Evelyn M. Anderson was an American physiologist and biochemist, most known for her co-discovery of adrenocorticotropic hormone in 1934. Background Evelyn Anderson was born in Willmar, Minnesota, to Swedish immigrants parents. She attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she obtained her bachelor's. In 1928, she gained her M.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Medicine. During her time at Berkeley, her research culminated into two papers about vitamin A and nutrition. She continued on to receive her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Montreal in 1934.
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Joseph Gottfried Mikan
1743 - 1814 (71 years)
Joseph Gottfried Mikan was an Austrian-Czech botanist born in Böhmisch-Leipa . He was the father of zoologist Johann Christian Mikan . He was a student in Dresden, Prague and Vienna, and served as a spa physician in Teplice. In 1773 he became an associate professor, and two years later was appointed a full professor of botany and chemistry at the University of Prague. In 1798 he became rector of the university.
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Johan Petter Norrlin
1842 - 1917 (75 years)
Johan Petter Norrlin was a Finnish botanist and a professor of botany at the University of Helsinki from 1879 to 1903. He was a pioneer of plant geography in Finland, and is also well known for his work on lichens and on the taxonomy of the apomictic taxa of the plant genera Hieracium and Pilosella.
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Dora Jacobsohn
1908 - 1983 (75 years)
Dora Elisabeth Jacobsohn was a German-Swedish physiologist and endocrinologist. Considered one of the early pioneers of the field of neuroendocrinology, she is best known for her work with Geoffrey Harris showing that the anterior pituitary gland is controlled by the hypothalamus via the hypophyseal portal system.
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Maximilian Leidesdorf
1818 - 1889 (71 years)
Maximilian Leidesdorf was an Austrian psychiatrist born in Vienna. He was the son of the composer Maximilian Joseph Leidesdorf. In 1845 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna, afterwards visiting asylums in Italy, Germany, England and France. In 1856 he received his habilitation in Vienna, where he practiced medicine for the remainder of his career. In 1872 he became head of the department of mental illness at Vienna General Hospital, followed by an appointment in 1875 as director of the Landesirrenanstalt . One of his famous assistants was Julius Wagner-Jauregg , win...
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Felix Eugen Fritsch
1879 - 1954 (75 years)
Felix Eugen Fritsch FRS was a British biologist. Fritssch was born in Hampstead in London in 1879 where his father owned and operated a school. Fritsch started his career at the University of Munich before moving to research at University College London and also the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. He was Professor and Head of the Botanical Department, Queen Mary College , University of London, from 1911-1948. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1932 and won their Darwin Medal in 1950. He served as president of the Linnean Society from 1949 to 1952 and was awarded the society's L...
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Thomas Kirk
1828 - 1898 (70 years)
Thomas Kirk was an English-born botanist, teacher, public servant, writer and churchman who moved to New Zealand with his wife and four children in late 1862. The New Zealand government commissioned him in 1884 to compile a report on the indigenous forests of the country and appointed him as chief conservator of forests the following year. He published 130 papers in botany and plants including The Durability of New Zealand Timbers, The Forest Flora of New Zealand and Students' Flora of New Zealand.
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Philip Pye-Smith
1839 - 1914 (75 years)
Philip Henry Pye-Smith FRS FRCP was an English physician, medical scientist and educator. His interest was physiology, specialising in skin diseases. Life Philip Pye-Smith was born in 1839 at Billiter Square, London EC3, England, the son of Ebenezer and Mary Anne Pye-Smith. He was educated at Mill Hill School and University College London before pursuing a medical career at Guy's Hospital and University of London.
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Arthur Gamgee
1841 - 1909 (68 years)
Prof Arthur Gamgee FRS FRSE was a British biochemist. Life Arthur Gamgee was the youngest of eight children of Joseph Gamgee, an Edinburgh-born veterinarian and pathologist and his wife Mary Ann West. He was born in Florence, Italy, where his father had a practice nearby in Leghorn. His family moved back to England when he was fourteen years old. He was educated at University College School in London and at the University of Edinburgh, graduating with an MD in 1862. For his thesis, Contributions to the Chemistry and Physiology of Foetal Nutrition, he was awarded a gold medal. He did postgradu...
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George Montagu
1751 - 1815 (64 years)
George Montagu was an English army officer and naturalist. He was known for his pioneering Ornithological Dictionary of 1802, which for the first time accurately defined the status of Britain's birds. He is remembered today for species such as the Montagu's harrier, named for him.
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Mary Belle Allen
1922 - 1973 (51 years)
Mary Belle Allen was an American botanist, chemist, mycologist, algologist, and plant pathologist, and a pioneer of biochemical microbiology. With Daniel I. Arnon and F. Robert Whatley, she did breakthrough research discovering and demonstrating the role of chloroplasts in photosynthesis. In 1962 she received the Darbaker Prize from the Botanical Society of America for her work on microbial algae. In 1967 she was nominated jointly with Arnon and Whatley for a Nobel Prize.
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Felix Victor Birch-Hirschfeld
1842 - 1899 (57 years)
Felix Victor Birch-Hirschfeld was a German pathologist who was a native of Kluvensieck bei Rendsburg. Biography In 1867 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Leipzig, where he studied under Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich and Ernst Leberecht Wagner . In 1870 he became a prosector at the city hospital in Dresden, and in 1885 returned to Leipzig, where he succeeded Julius Cohnheim as chair of pathological anatomy. One of his better known assistants was pathologist Christian Georg Schmorl .
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Guglielmo Gasparrini
1803 - 1866 (63 years)
Guglielmo Gasparrini was an Italian botanist and mycologist. Biography Guglielmo Gasparrini was born in Castelgrande, in the Province of Potenza. After his first studies in his native town, he moved to Naples to attend the veterinary school. Subsequently, he entered the Botanical Garden of Naples, under the guide of Michele Tenore and Giovanni Gussone.
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Lovell Augustus Reeve
1814 - 1865 (51 years)
Lovell Augustus Reeve was an English conchologist and publisher. Life Born at Ludgate Hill, London, on 19 April 1814, he was a son of Thomas Reeve, draper and mercer, by his wife Fanny Lovell. After attending school at Stockwell, he was apprenticed at the age of 13 to Mr. Graham, a local grocer. The chance of purchase of some shells led to a lifelong interest in conchology. In 1833 he attended the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Cambridge. At the end of his apprenticeship Reeve paid a visit to Paris, where he read a paper on the classification of Mollusca before the Academy of Sciences.
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Silvia Zenari
1895 - 1956 (61 years)
Silvia Zenari was an Italian geologist and botanist. Zenari was born in Udine, Italy and studied at the University of Padua, graduating in 1918. While working for the Istituto di Geologia, Zenari studied the Dolomites in Belluno, Cadore, and Comelico between 1930 and 1950, eventually turning her focus on botany as well as geology. She was the first to complete a study on the ecology of plant life at high elevations, primarily in the Sexten Dolomites range. She later moved on to studying the Schiara range, including Monte Serva. Her research included a statistical analysis of plants at various elevations, which explained the distribution of various species.
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Charles Emerson Beecher
1856 - 1904 (48 years)
Charles Emerson Beecher was an American paleontologist most famous for the thorough excavation, preparation and study of trilobite ventral anatomy from specimens collected at Beecher's Trilobite Bed. Beecher was rapidly promoted at Yale Peabody Museum, eventually rising to head that institution.
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Hans Johansen
1897 - 1973 (76 years)
Hans Christian Johansen was a Danish-Russian professor of zoology, first at Tomsk State University, later at the University of Copenhagen. Life Hans Johansen was born in Riga, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire to Danish parents. He went to Knight and Cathedral school to Reval in Reval . As a young research-eager student, he came to Tomsk in spring 1916 to study natural history. He met the Russian ornithologist Hermann Johansen, with whom he had no blood-relationship . They went on a bird-collection expedition to the southern border of the taiga between the rivers Om and Ob. In 1917, Hans Johansen investigated the Baraba steppe alone.
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Paul Carpenter Standley
1884 - 1963 (79 years)
Paul Carpenter Standley was an American botanist known for his work on neotropical plants. Biography Standley was born on March 21, 1884, in Avalon, Missouri. He attended Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, and New Mexico State College, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1907, and received a master's degree from New Mexico State College in 1908. He remained at New Mexico State College as an assistant from 1908 to 1909. He was the assistant curator of the Division of Plants at the United States National Museum from 1909 to 1922.
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