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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,

#17201

Charlotte Auerbach

1899 - 1994 (95 years)

Charlotte "Lotte" Auerbach FRS FRSE was a German geneticist who contributed to founding the science of mutagenesis. She became well known after 1942 when she discovered with A. J. Clark and J. M. Robson that mustard gas could cause mutations in fruit flies. She wrote 91 scientific papers, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Royal Society of London.

#17202

Benjamin Karpman

1886 - 1962 (76 years)

Benjamin Karpman was an American psychiatrist known for his work on human sexuality. He served as Professor and Head of Psychiatry at Howard University College of Medicine from 1921 to 1941. Life and career Karpman was born in Slutzk, Belarus. He graduated from the University of Minnesota, earning a bachelor's degree in 1915, a master's degree in 1918, and a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1920. While at University of Minnesota Medical School, he worked with Jesse Francis McClendon on pioneering in situ pH measurements in the human digestive tract. After completing his internship at St. Elizabeths Hospital, he rose to the position of Senior Medical Officer and Psychotherapist.

#17203

Herbert Friedmann

Herbert Friedmann

1900 - 1987 (87 years)

Herbert Friedmann was an American ornithologist. He worked at the Smithsonian Institution for more than 30 years. In 1929 he became a fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union and served as the President of the AOU from 1937 to 1939. He published 17 books and was noted for study of Avian brood parasites.

#17204

Robert Bennett Bean

1874 - 1944 (70 years)

Robert Bennett Bean was an associate professor of anatomy and ethnologist adept to craniometry and the concept of "race", whose scientific work was discredited by his mentor but who nonetheless became a professor at the University of Virginia and remained so until his death.

#17205

Melville Hatch

1898 - 1988 (90 years)

Melville Harrison Hatch was an American entomologist who specialized in the study of beetles. His long career at the University of Washington was highlighted by the publication of the seminal, five-volume work Beetles of the Pacific Northwest. Hatch is responsible for the identification and naming of 13 species.

#17206

Geoffrey Jefferson

1886 - 1961 (75 years)

Sir Geoffrey Jefferson was a British neurologist and pioneering neurosurgeon. Jefferson was born in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, the son of surgeon Arthur John Jefferson , and Cecilia James. He was educated in Manchester, England, obtaining his medical degree in 1909. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons two years later. He married in 1914, and moved to Canada. On the outbreak of World War I, he returned to Europe and worked at the Anglo-Russian Hospital in Petrograd, Russia, and then with the Royal Army Medical Corps in France.

#17207

David Marr

1945 - 1980 (35 years)

David Courtenay Marr was a British neuroscientist and physiologist. Marr integrated results from psychology, artificial intelligence, and neurophysiology into new models of visual processing. His work was very influential in computational neuroscience and led to a resurgence of interest in the discipline.

#17208

Lewis W. Wannamaker

1923 - 1983 (60 years)

Lewis William Wannamaker was an American biochemist who won the Robert Koch Prize with César Milstein in 1980. He received his bachelor's degree from Emory University and his M.D. from the Duke University School of Medicine and taught at the University of Minnesota. In 1982 he was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He died in 1983 at the age of 59.

#17209

I. Michael Lerner

1910 - 1977 (67 years)

Israel Michael Lerner was a prominent geneticist and evolutionary biologist. Born in Harbin, Manchuria, he received his Ph.D. in genetics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1936. He was appointed instructor of poultry husbandry and joined the university's department of genetics in 1958.

#17210

Edwin Broun Fred

1887 - 1981 (94 years)

Edwin Broun Fred was an American bacteriologist and academic who was the 15th president of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, serving from 1945 to 1958. Born in Virginia, Fred studied at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the University of Göttingen. After briefly teaching at Virginia Polytechnic, Fred took a position with Wisconsin. He was dean of the graduate school from 1934 until 1943, then was dean of the College of Agriculture until 1945. He ascended to the presidency and was known for his response to the postwar growth in admissions. Fred was the president of the Society of Ameri...

#17211

Roger J. Williams

1893 - 1988 (95 years)

Roger John Williams , was an American biochemist. He is known for is work on vitamins and human nutrition. He had leading roles in the discovery of folic acid, pantothenic acid, vitamin B6, lipoic acid, and avidin. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1946, and served as the president of the American Chemical Society in 1957. In his later career he spent time writing for a popular audience on the importance of nutrition.

#17212

Douglas Vernon Hubble

1900 - 1981 (81 years)

Sir Douglas Vernon Hubble was a paediatric endocrinologist, general practitioner, and professor of paediatrics and dean of medicine at the University of Birmingham. Hubble was principally notable for research into paediatric endocrinology and publishing a number of papers on the subject, which gave him a national reputation.

#17213

Lemuel Roscoe Cleveland

1892 - 1969 (77 years)

Lemuel Roscoe Cleveland was an American zoologist and protistologist, famous for giving the first, strong empirical proof for the existence of a symbiotic relationship between internal microorganisms and their metazoan host.

#17214

Philip Sheppard

1921 - 1976 (55 years)

Professor Philip MacDonald Sheppard, F.R.S. was a British geneticist and lepidopterist. He made advances in ecological and population genetics in lepidopterans, pulmonate land snails and humans. In medical genetics, he worked with Sir Cyril Clarke on Rh disease.

#17215

Hans Thacher Clarke

1887 - 1972 (85 years)

Hans Thacher Clarke was a prominent biochemist during the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in England where he received his university training, but also studied in Germany and Ireland. He spent the remainder of his life in the United States.

#17216

Elso Barghoorn

1915 - 1984 (69 years)

Elso Sterrenberg Barghoorn was an American paleobotanist, called by his student Andrew Knoll, the present Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard, "the father of Pre-Cambrian palaeontology." Barghoorn is best known for discovering in South African rocks fossil evidence of life that is at least 3.4 billion years old. These fossils show that life was present on Earth comparatively soon after the Late Heavy Bombardment .

#17217

Ernest Borek

1911 - 1986 (75 years)

Ernest Borek was a Hungarian-American microbiologist, university professor, cancer researcher, and author. He was a professor at City University of New York and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons . He was chairman of the Colorado Regional Cancer Center's Support Review Committee of the National Cancer Institute.

#17218

William Seifriz

1888 - 1955 (67 years)

William Seifriz was a professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania and an important figure in the history of plant physiology and plant cell biology. Personal life Seifriz was born on August 11, 1888, outside of Washington, D.C. to Paul Seifriz M.D. and his wife, both of whom emigrated from Germany in 1887. After Paul Seifriz died, Seifriz' mother ran a boarding house for scientists from the United States Department of Agriculture. This association with botanists led the young Seifriz to pursue the study of botany. After graduating McKinley Technical High School in 1907 as valedicto...

#17219

P. Jackson Darlington Jr.

1904 - 1983 (79 years)

Philip Jackson Darlington Jr. was an American entomologist, field naturalist, biogeographer, museum curator, and zoology professor. He was known for his collecting ability and his toughness and determination on field expeditions.

#17220

Peter Alfred Gorer

1907 - 1961 (54 years)

Peter Alfred Gorer FRS was a British immunologist, pathologist and geneticist who pioneered the field of transplant immunology. Peter Gorer was born in London to Edgar and Rachel née Cohen Gorer. He died of lung cancer in 1961.

#17221

Hans Gaffron

1902 - 1979 (77 years)

Dr. Hans Gaffron was born in Lima, Peru, on May 17, 1902, and was a son of the German physician Eduard Gaffron and his wife Hedwig von Gevekot. He was one of the earlier researchers trying to elucidate the mechanistic and biochemical details of photosynthesis and plant metabolism. His most notable finding was the discovery of a process whereby unicellular green algae can produce molecular Hydrogen in the presence of light, and that the precursors were derived from photosynthetic water-splitting. Applications based on his work have led to many efforts to develop H2 as a renewable biofuel.

#17222

Cecil Edmund Yarwood

1908 - 1981 (73 years)

Cecil Edmund Yarwood was an American-Canadian plant pathologist whose work focused on obligate parasites of plants, viruses, and conditions that predisposed plants to infections. He is considered an authority on rust and powdery mildew.

#17223

Raymond B. Cowles

1896 - 1975 (79 years)

Raymond Bridgman Cowles was a herpetologist and professor at University of California, Los Angeles. Born in the British Colony of Natal to American missionary parents, he emigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. He attended Pomona College as an undergrad and earned his PhD at Cornell University under Albert Hazen Wright. He is known for his research on desert ecology and reptile thermoregulation, as well as his popular books on environmental conservation. Cowles died of a heart attack in 1975 at the age of 79. An obituary called him one of America's first ecologists and conservatio...

#17224

Margaret Oakley Dayhoff

1925 - 1983 (58 years)

Margaret Belle Dayhoff was an American physical chemist and a pioneer in the field of bioinformatics. Dayhoff was a professor at Georgetown University Medical Center and a noted research biochemist at the National Biomedical Research Foundation, where she pioneered the application of mathematics and computational methods to the field of biochemistry. She dedicated her career to applying the evolving computational technologies to support advances in biology and medicine, most notably the creation of protein and nucleic acid databases and tools to interrogate the databases. She originated one of the first substitution matrices, point accepted mutations .

#17225

Martin Grotjahn

1904 - 1990 (86 years)

Martin Grotjahn was a German-born American psychoanalyst who was known for his contributions to the field of psychoanalysis. He was the son of doctor Alfred Grotjahn and was born in Berlin, Germany.

#17226

Henry Shoemaker Conard

1874 - 1971 (97 years)

Henry Shoemaker Conard was a leading authority on bryophytes and water lilies, as well as an early advocate of environmental preservation. From 1906 to 1955, Professor Conard worked at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. In 1954, he became the first to receive the Eminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America, an award that has continued annually ever since.

#17227

Truman G. Yuncker

Truman G. Yuncker

1891 - 1964 (73 years)

Truman George Yuncker was a taxonomic botanist best known for his work in the family Piperaceae. Yuncker first taught at Manual High School in Indianapolis, Indiana. After service in World War I, he received his doctorate from the University of Illinois in 1919. Soon after, he became a faculty member at DePauw University and became head of the botany and bacteriology department in 1921 and held that post until retirement in 1956. During his tenure he described 839 new species, 211 new varieties and 25 new formae in the Piperaceae. He wrote the treatment of that family in almost every regional flora published during his lifetime.

#17228

Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks

Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks

1888 - 1981 (93 years)

Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks was a cellular biologist best known for her 1932 discovery that the staining compound methylene blue is an antidote to carbon monoxide and cyanide poisoning. She held a PhD in zoology and spent her professional career working as a researcher at the United States Public Health Service and the University of California, Berkeley.

#17229

Marion Webster

1921 - 1985 (64 years)

Marion Elizabeth Webster-Bukovsky was a Canadian-American biochemist who was the first to isolate the Vi antigen of typhoid and to determine its structure. She published extensively on the kinin–kallikrein system while at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Webster was an advocate for women in science and served as president of the Association for Women in Science and Graduate Women in Science.

#17230

Edwin Butterworth Mains

Edwin Butterworth Mains

1890 - 1968 (78 years)

Edwin Butterworth Mains was an American mycologist. He was known for his taxonomic research on the rust fungi , the genus Cordyceps, and the earth tongues . Biography Edwin Butterworth Mains was born on 31 March 1890 in Coldwater, Branch County, Michigan. The son of Benjamin W. and Mary Ann Mains. Mains began his undergraduate education at Michigan State University in 1909, but transferred to the University of Michigan in 1911. He earned his Ph.D. in botany from the University of Michigan in 1916 under the tutelage of Calvin Henry Kauffman while investigating the parasite-host relationships of various rust fungi.

#17231

Marjorie Roloff Stetten

1916 - 1983 (67 years)

Marjorie Roloff Stetten was an American biochemist whose carbohydrate metabolism research led to the advancements in biomedical knowledge of enzymes and biosynthesis and the discovery of AICA ribonucleotide. During her career, she was an investigator at the National Institutes of Health and a research professor of experimental medicine at Rutgers Medical School.

#17232

Harold Kirby

1900 - 1952 (52 years)

Harold Kirby, Jr. was a Canadian-American zoologist and protistologist, who was the chair of U. C. Berkeley's department of zoology from 1948 to 1952. Kirby immigrated in 1903 with his family to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 1933. He received in 1922 his B.S. from Emory University and then in 1923 his M.A. and in 1925 his Ph.D. from U. C. Berkeley. C. A. Kofoid was the advisor for his doctoral dissertation. From 1925 to 1928 Kirby was an instructor in biology at Yale University. At U. C. Berkeley's zoology department, he was from 1928 to 1931 an assistant professor, fr...

#17233

Sven Hörstadius

1898 - 1996 (98 years)

Sven Hörstadius was a Swedish embryologist known for his work on sea urchin embryos. He was responsible for an increased understanding of the neural crest. Hörstadius studied under John Runnström at Stockholm University College and was awarded his Ph.D. in 1930. He was appointed professor of zoology at Uppsala University 1942, where he remained until his retirement in 1964, but continued to lecture as an emeritus. He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1946 and of the Royal Society in 1952.

#17234

Archibald Gowanlock Huntsman

1883 - 1973 (90 years)

Archibald Gowanlock Huntsman was a Canadian academic, oceanographer, and fisheries biologist. He is best known for his research on Atlantic salmon and inventing the fast freezing of fish fillets in 1929.

#17235

Alexander Petrunkevitch

1875 - 1964 (89 years)

Alexander Ivanovitch Petrunkevitch was a Russian arachnologist. From 1910 to 1939 he described over 130 spider species. One of his most famous essays was "The Spider and the Wasp." In it he uses effective word choices and some comic touch.

#17236

Samuel J. Record

1881 - 1945 (64 years)

Samuel James Record was an American botanist who played a prominent role in the study of wood. Born at Crawfordsville, Indiana, Record graduated from Wabash College in 1903 and received a Master of Forestry degree from Yale University in 1905. After working for the US Forest Service he joined the faculty of the Yale School of Forestry in 1910. In 1917 he became Professor of forest products, and in 1939 was made Dean of the school.

#17237

Lewis Stadler

1896 - 1954 (58 years)

Lewis John Stadler was an American geneticist. His research focused on the mutagenic effects of different forms of radiation on economically important plants like maize and barley. Biography Lewis John Stadler was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1896 to Henry Louis and Josephine Ehrman Stadler. Stadler's early education efforts were unremarkable, but two summers worked on Midwestern farms sparked an interest in agriculture. He began his undergraduate work at the University of Missouri and completed a B.S. in agriculture at the University of Florida . Afterwards, he returned to the University of Missouri and earned the A.M.

#17238

Vasco M. Tanner

Vasco M. Tanner

1892 - 1989 (97 years)

Vasco Myron Tanner was an American entomologist from Utah, professor of zoology, and chair of the zoology and entomology departmentat Brigham Young University . Tanner also taught at Dixie College while he did research. He published over 140 scientific articles, mostly focusing on insects, but also researching birds, mammals, reptiles and fishes. He also founded the journal The Great Basin Naturalist. Tanner was a part of numerous entomology recreational societies and worked to reduce flood risk as chair of the forestry and flood control committee with Provo's Chamber of Commerce. Tanner created and funded an award at Dixie College, which still exists today.

#17239

Arthur Stanley Pease

1881 - 1964 (83 years)

Arthur Stanley Pease was a professor of Classics, a respected amateur botanist, and the tenth president of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Pease was once described by his fellow faculty members as an "indefatigable pedestrian, and New Englander to the core."

#17240

Francis Rex Parrington

1905 - 1981 (76 years)

Francis Rex Parrington was a British vertebrate palaeontologist and comparative anatomist at the University of Cambridge. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he was director of the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology and past president of the zoology section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

#17241

Jesse Roy Christie

1889 - 1978 (89 years)

Jesse Roy Christie was an American nematologist and plant pathologist. Career In 1922, shortly after leaving the army, Jesse Christie joined the group of N. A. Cobb at the Office of Nematology in Washington D.C., part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Between 1923 and 1937 he published 19 papers on the nematode parasites of insects, as well as contributed to a 129-page chapter in Benjamin Goodwin Chitwood's Introduction to Nematology. While working at Woods Hole with N. A. Cobb, he also discovered the life cycle of the nematode parasite on grasshoppers Mermis subnigrescens.

#17242

Zeno Payne Metcalf

1885 - 1956 (71 years)

Zeno Payne Metcalf was an American entomologist specialising in Auchenorrhyncha. Education Metcalf, born in Lakeville, Ohio, was educated at Ohio State University. He received his A.B. degree in 1907. He attended Harvard University and was awarded the degree of D.Sc. in 1925.

#17243

David H. Linder

David H. Linder

1899 - 1946 (47 years)

David Hunt Linder was an American mycologist known for his work on the Helicosporous fungi and his dedications for the advancement of mycological knowledge. He curated the Farlow Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany at Harvard University and founded a highly respected journal Farlowia.

#17244

George Alfred Baitsell

George Alfred Baitsell

1885 - 1971 (86 years)

George Alfred Baitsell was an American biologist. He was Professor of biology at Yale University. He was an official of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and published several science books.

#17245

Arthur Ward Lindsey

1894 - 1963 (69 years)

Arthur Ward Lindsey was an American entomologist. Arthur Ward Lindsey was educated at Morningside College in Sioux City gaining his Bachelor of Arts in 1916. Collecting butterflies from his youth, he published his first publication in 1914.

#17246

John Axel Nannfeldt

John Axel Nannfeldt

1904 - 1985 (81 years)

John-Axel Nannfeldt , born 18 January 1904 in Trelleborg and deceased 4 November 1985 in Uppsala, was a Swedish botanist and mycologist. Nannfeldt studied natural history at the University of Uppsala and obtained a doctorate degree in 1932. He became professor of botany at Uppsala University in 1939, a position he held until his retirement in 1970. He did numerous studies on the systematics of fungi and vascular plants. Among the groups he treated were the plant pathogenic rust fungi, smut fungi and Exobasidium. He also treated taxonomy and biogeography of various groups of vascular plants, e.g.

#17247

Francis Marion Ownbey

1910 - 1974 (64 years)

Francis Marion Ownbey was an American botanist. Ownbey earned his Ph.D. at the Washington University in St. Louis, with Jesse M. Greenman. Ownbey began to teach at Washington State University in 1939, and became director of the herbarium. During World War II, he was sent to Ecuador as part of the Cinchona Missions.

#17248

Thomas Bennet-Clark

1903 - 1975 (72 years)

Thomas Archibald Bennet-Clark CBE FRS was a British biologist. Early life He was born in Edinburgh the son of Thomas Bennet-Clark, a chartered accountant with the Edinburgh firm of R. & G. Scott, and his wife, Anne Chalmers Hanna.

#17249

Constance Endicott Hartt

Constance Endicott Hartt

1900 - 1984 (84 years)

Constance Endicott Hartt was a U.S. botanist notable for her research on sugarcane. She was born in Passaic, New Jersey. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1922. She taught at St. Lawrence University and Connecticut College. She also worked as a botanist for the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association. Hartt died in Hawaii in 1984.

#17250

Karl Leonhard

1904 - 1988 (84 years)

Karl Leonhard was a German psychiatrist who was a student and collaborator of Karl Kleist, who himself stood in the tradition of Carl Wernicke. With Kleist, he created a complex nosology of psychotic illnesses. His work covered psychology, psychotherapy, biological psychiatry and biological psychology. Moreover, he created a classification of nonverbal communication.

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