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 …
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List of the most influential people in Biology,
#1751
Thavamani Jegajothivel Pandian
#31922
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Thavamani Jegajothivel Pandian , a retired professor of Madurai Kamaraj University , is an Indian geneticist and ecologist, known for his pioneering studies in bioenergetics and animal ecology. A recipient of the WorldFish Naga Award, he is a former chairman of the Task Force Committee on Aqua and Marine Biotechnology of the Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India, a former president and a fellow of The World Academy of Sciences and an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, India, Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Go to Profile#1752
Gordon H. Sato
#38470
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Gordon Hisashi Sato was an American cell biologist who first attained prominence for his discovery that polypeptide factors required for the culture of mammalian cells outside the body are also important regulators of differentiated cell functions and of utility in culture of new types of cells for use in research and biotechnology. For this work he was elected in 1984 to the United States National Academy of Sciences. In the mid-1980s he established the Manzanar Project aimed at attacking the planet's most critical problems as poverty, hunger, environmental pollution, and global warming thro...
Go to Profile#1753
Geoff Parker
#24136
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Professor Geoffrey Alan Parker FRS is an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Liverpool and the 2008 recipient of the Darwin Medal. Parker has been called “the professional’s professional”.
Go to Profile#1754
Joe Lutkenhaus
#35436
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Joe Lutkenhaus is a professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He received a B.S. in organic chemistry from Iowa state University and then a PhD in biochemistry for the University of California, Los Angeles. Following his PhD, Lutkenhaus pursued his postdoctoral studies with William Donachie at the University of Edinburgh and then continued at the University of Connecticut Health Science center. In 2002, Lutkenhaus became a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Go to Profile#1755
Anthony W. Norman
#45921
Overall Influence
1938 - 2019 (81 years)
Anthony W. Norman was a professor emeritus of biochemistry and biomedical sciences at the University of California, Riverside and one of the world's foremost experts on vitamin D. Vitamin D Research Norman's research was in the area of cellular and molecular endocrinology, where he was internationally known for his breakthroughs in the study of vitamin D. This included the mechanisms of action of the steroid hormone 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol, vitamin D structure-function relationships, and actions of the vitamin D receptor .
Go to Profile#1756
Stephen Stahl
#21438
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Stephen Michael Stahl is an author and professor of psychiatry with expertise in psychopharmacology. He is currently a professor at the University of California, San Diego, and serves as Honorary Fellow in psychiatry department at the University of Cambridge. He is also the chairman of Neuroscience Education Institute and Arbor Scientia Group.
Go to Profile#1757
Elof Axel Carlson
#45002
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Elof Axel Carlson is distinguished teaching professor emeritus at State University of New York at Stony Brook, as well as an American geneticist and noted historian of science. Carlson earned his B.A. in 1953 from New York University, and his PhD in 1958 in zoology from Indiana University Bloomington under the mentorship of Hermann Joseph Muller. Carlson is a past recipient of the E. Harris Harbison Award for excellence in teaching given by the Danforth Foundation.
Go to Profile#1758
Lauren Ackerman
#25756
Overall Influence
1905 - 1993 (88 years)
Lauren Vedder Ackerman was an American physician and pathologist, who championed the subspecialty of surgical pathology in the mid-20th century. Early life Ackerman was born in March 1905 in Auburn, New York, to Bertha and John Ackerman. Both of his parents were college graduates. His father was a civil and mechanical engineer, who later became city manager of Watertown, New York. Despite growing up in a learned family environment, Lauren was an indifferent student with mediocre grades. After high school graduation in 1923 Ackerman began his college studies at St. Lawrence University , later transferring to, and graduating from, Hamilton College in 1927 with a B.S.
Go to Profile#1759
Lalita Ramakrishnan
#28859
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Lalita Ramakrishnan is an Indian-born American microbiologist who is known for her contributions to the understanding of the biological mechanism of tuberculosis. she serves as a professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Cambridge, where she is also a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and a practicing physician. Her research is conducted at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology , where she serves as the Head of the Molecular Immunity Unit of the Department of Medicine embedded at the MRC LMB. Working with Stanley Falkow at Stanford, she developed the strategy of using Mycobacterium marinum infection as a model for tuberculosis.
Go to Profile#1760
Stanislas Leibler
#37870
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Stanislas Leibler is a French–American theoretical and experimental biologist and physicist. He is Systems Biology Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Gladys T. Perkin Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Living Matter at the Rockefeller University.
Go to Profile#1761
Farish Jenkins
#40002
Overall Influence
1940 - 2012 (72 years)
Farish Alston Jenkins was a professor at Harvard University who studied and taught paleontology. His discoveries included a transitional creature with characteristics of both fish and land animals — Tiktaalik roseae —and one of the earliest known frogs, Prosalirus bitis.
Go to Profile#1762
Hans-Georg Rammensee
#33708
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Hans-Georg Rammensee is a German immunologist and cancer researcher. He has been Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Immunology at the University of Tübingen since 1996. Rammensee has contributed essentially to the research fields of MHC biology and tumor immunology and to the development of cancer immunotherapies.
Go to Profile#1763
Theodore Garland Jr.
#41416
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Theodore Garland Jr. is a biologist specializing in evolutionary physiology at the University of California, Riverside. Education Garland earned his B.S in zoology and M.S. in biology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, working with William Glen Bradley, a mammalogist, and his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine under Albert F. Bennett, a comparative physiologist.
Go to Profile#1764
Howard L. Weiner
#40391
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Howard L. Weiner is an American neurologist, neuroscientist and immunologist who is also a writer and filmmaker. He performs clinical and basic research focused on multiple sclerosis and other neurologic diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease . His work also focuses on autoimmune diseases such as diabetes. Weiner is the Robert L. Kroc Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, director of the Brigham MS Center at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and co-director of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases established in 2014, at the Brigham and Women's Hospi...
Go to Profile#1765
Alexander Shulgin
#941
Overall Influence
1925 - 2014 (89 years)
Alexander Theodore "Sasha" Shulgin was an American medicinal chemist, biochemist, organic chemist, pharmacologist, psychopharmacologist, and author. He is credited with introducing 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine to psychologists in the late 1970s for psychopharmaceutical use and for the discovery, synthesis and personal bioassay of over 230 psychoactive compounds for their psychedelic and entactogenic potential.
Go to Profile#1766
Joseph Sambrook
#47117
Overall Influence
1939 - 2019 (80 years)
Joseph Frank Sambrook was a British molecular biologist known for his studies of DNA oncoviruses and the molecular biology of normal and cancerous cells. Education and early career Sambrook was educated at the University of Liverpool and obtained his PhD at the Australian National University in 1966. He did postdoctoral research at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies . In 1969 he was hired by James D. Watson to work at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Watson has been reported to say this was the best hiring decision he ever made.
Go to Profile#1767
Nima Rezaei
#43064
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Nima Rezaei is an Iranian scientist, a professor of clinical immunology and allergy at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Associate Dean of International Affairs in the School of Medicine and the Director of Global Academic Program . Nima Rezaei is the mastermind, founder and current president of the Universal Scientific Education and Research Network . Rezaei is known for his research in Primary Immunodeficiencies, characterization and treatment. He initiated the Iranian Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases Registry in 1999 under supervision of Professor Asghar Aghamohammadi, which earned...
Go to Profile#1768
Takao Kondo
#36650
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
was a Japanese biologist and professor of biological science at Nagoya University in Nagoya, Japan. He is best known for reconstituting the circadian clock in vitro. Biography Kondo was born in 1948 in Kariya, Aichi, Japan, and received his B.S. in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Biology in 1977 from Nagoya University. He was appointed an assistant professor at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Okazaki, Aichi, Japan in 1978. Kondo began work as a visiting scholar at Harvard University in 1985, then continued his work abroad at Vanderbilt University between 1990 and 1991. It was at Vanderbilt University that Kondo began his research on the circadian clock of cyanobacteria.
Go to Profile#1769
J. William Costerton
#54898
Overall Influence
1934 - 2012 (78 years)
John William Fisher "Bill" Costerton was a Canadian microbiologist and the main pioneer of the paradigm of microbial life as a community of microorganisms attached to hydrated surfaces by means of biofilms. He is sometimes referred to as the "Father of Biofilms" or the "King of Slime".
Go to Profile#1770
Lyndley Craven
#40738
Overall Influence
1945 - 2014 (69 years)
Lyndley Alan Craven was a botanist who became the Principal Research Scientist of the Australian National Herbarium. Lyndley Craven worked for the CSIRO plant taxonomy unit of the New Guinea Survey Group, Division of Land Research and Regional Survey from 1964 to 1967. This was part of a unit that became the Australian National Herbarium, Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research. Craven's duties included botanical support for land resources surveys.
Go to Profile#1771
David Glover
#44765
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
David Moore Glover is a British geneticist and Research Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He served as Balfour Professor of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, a Wellcome Trust investigator in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He serves as the first editor-in-chief of the open-access journal Open Biology published by the Royal Society.
Go to Profile#1772
Thomas B. Kornberg
#43538
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Thomas Bill Kornberg is an American biochemist who was the first person to purify and characterise DNA polymerase II and DNA polymerase III. He is currently a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, and is working on Drosophila melanogaster development.
Go to Profile#1773
George Christopher Williams
#25946
Overall Influence
1926 - 2010 (84 years)
George Christopher Williams was an American evolutionary biologist. Williams was a professor of biology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who was best known for his vigorous critique of group selection. The work of Williams in this area, along with W. D. Hamilton, John Maynard Smith, Richard Dawkins, and others led to the development of the gene-centered view of evolution in the 1960s.
Go to Profile#1774
Louis M. Kunkel
#47947
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Louis Martens Kunkel is an American geneticist and member of the National Academy of Sciences . His father and grandfather were also scientists and NAS members. Kunkel came from a Lutheran background and attended Lutheran schools in youth. He later graduated from Gettysburg College in 1971. He obtained his PhD from Johns Hopkins University. He is noted for discovering dystrophin, which is relevant to muscular dystrophy research.
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Alberto Kornblihtt
#29699
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Alberto Kornblihtt is an Argentine molecular biologist who specializes in alternative ribonucleic acid splicing. During his postdoctoral training with Francisco Baralle in Oxford, Kornblihtt documented one of the first cases of alternative splicing, explaining how a single transcribed gene can generate multiple protein variants. Kornblihtt was elected as a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States in 2011, received the Diamond Award for the most relevant scientist of Argentina of the decade, alongside physicist Juan Martin Maldacena, in 2013., and was incorpor...
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Charles Kimberlin Brain
#31181
Overall Influence
1931 - 2023 (92 years)
Charles Kimberlin Brain , also known as C. K. "Bob" Brain, was a South African paleontologist who studied and taught African cave taphonomy for more than fifty years. Biography Brain was born in Salisbury, Northern Rhodesia on 7 May 1931.
Go to Profile#1777
Stewart Cole
#35946
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Sir Stewart Thomas Cole is a British/French microbiologist. He has been the director general of the Pasteur Institute since January 2018. Early life and education Cole grew up in Wales, where he was educated at Milford Haven Grammar School and then at Ardwyn Grammar School, Aberystwyth. Following a life-threatening bout of paratyphoid he developed an interest in bacteria, viruses and infectious diseases, which led to his reading microbiology at the University of Wales, in Cardiff followed by research for his PhD at the University of Sheffield, England. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral f...
Go to Profile#1778
Ralph F. Hirschmann
#18576
Overall Influence
1922 - 2009 (87 years)
Ralph Franz Hirschmann was a German American chemist who led a team that was responsible for the first organic synthesis of an enzyme, a ribonuclease. Early life and education Born on May 6, 1922, in Fürth, he emigrated from Nazi Germany in 1936 and settled with his family in Kansas City, Missouri. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1943, he served in the United States Army for three years in the Pacific Theater of Operations. Following the completion of his military service, Hirschmann attended the University of Wisconsin–Ma...
Go to Profile#1779
Ursula Goodenough
#12412
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Ursula W. Goodenough is a Professor of Biology Emerita at Washington University in St. Louis where she engaged in research on eukaryotic algae. She authored the textbook Genetics and the best-selling book Sacred Depths of Nature and speaks regularly about religious naturalist orientation and evolution. She contributed to the NPR blog, 13.7: Cosmos & Culture, from 2009 to 2011.
Go to Profile#1780
Scott E. Fraser
#20156
Overall Influence
Scott E. Fraser is an American biophysicist and Provost Professor of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California . He is also the Elizabeth Garrett Chair in Convergent Bioscience and Director of Science Initiatives, where he is helping to launch USC’s Initiative in Convergent Bioscience. In addition, he holds joint appointments in the Departments of Physiology and Biophysics, Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Pediatrics, Radiology, and Ophthalmology.
Go to Profile#1781
Anders Dale
#49732
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Anders Martin Dale is a prominent neuroscientist and professor of radiology, neurosciences, psychiatry, and cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego , and is one of the world's leading developers of sophisticated computational neuroimaging techniques. He is the founding Director of the Center for Multimodal Imaging Genetics at UCSD.
Go to Profile#1782
Michael Goddard
#35283
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Michael Edward "Mike" Goddard is a professorial fellow in animal genetics at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Education Goddard was educated at the University of Melbourne where he was awarded Bachelor of Veterinary Science and PhD degrees.
Go to Profile#1783
Herman Waldmann
#37720
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Herman Waldmann FRS FMedSci is a British immunologist known for his work on therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. As of 2013, he is Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#1784
William J. Ripple
#15920
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
William J. Ripple is a professor of ecology at Oregon State University in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society. He is best known for his research on terrestrial trophic cascades, particularly the role of the gray wolf in North America as an apex predator and a keystone species that shapes food webs and landscape structures via “top-down” pressures.
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Richard D. Cummings
#41868
Overall Influence
Richard D. Cummings is an American biochemist who is the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He also the chief of the division of surgical sciences within the department of surgery. He is the director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Glycoscience, director of the National Center for Functional Glycomics, and also founder of the Glycomics Core at BIDMC. As of 2018 Cummings is also the scientific director of the Feihi Nutrition Laboratory at BIDMC. Before moving to BIDMC/HMS, Cummings was ...
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Mark B. Gerstein
#47720
Overall Influence
Mark Bender Gerstein is an American scientist working in bioinformatics and Data Science. , he is co-director of the Yale Computational Biology and Bioinformatics program. Mark Gerstein is Albert L. Williams Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Professor of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry , Professor of Statistics & Data Science, and Professor of Computer Science at Yale University. In 2018, Gerstein was named co-director of the Yale Center for Biomedical Data Science.
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H. Hugh Fudenberg
#36173
Overall Influence
1928 - 2014 (86 years)
Herman Hugh Fudenberg was an American clinical immunologist and the sole identified member of the Neuro Immuno Therapeutics Research Foundation . Fudenberg was a proponent of the discredited hypothesis that there was a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. In 1995 Fudenberg's medical license was suspended for improperly obtaining controlled substances.
Go to Profile#1788
Josef Ludwig Holub
#50900
Overall Influence
1930 - 1999 (69 years)
The Professor Josef Ludwig Holub was a Czech botanist who described a number of new species, worked on systematic reorganization of botanical groups, and contributed greatly to the study of European flora.
Go to Profile#1789
Peter Keightley
#44421
Overall Influence
Peter D. Keightley FRS is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Education Keightley was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he was awarded a PhD in 1989 for research on genetic variation supervised by William G. Hill. During his doctoral work he collaborated with Henrik Kacser on a highly cited paper on genetic dominance.
Go to Profile#1790
Mary-Lou Pardue
#49956
Overall Influence
Mary-Lou Pardue is an American geneticist who is a professor emerita in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which she originally joined in 1972. Her research focused on the role of telomeres in chromosome replication, particularly in Drosophila .
Go to Profile#1791
Dan Graur
#36501
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Dan Graur \ˈɡra.ur\ is a Romanian-American scientist working in the field of molecular evolution. He is a Moores Professor at the University of Houston and Professor Emeritus of Zoology at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He is coauthor along with Wen-Hsiung Li of Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution. His Molecular and Genome Evolution was published in 2016.
Go to Profile#1792
Gotthilf Hempel
#37813
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Gotthilf Hempel is a German marine biologist and oceanographer. Live Hempel studied biology and geology at the universities of Mainz and Heidelberg. In 1952 he gained his Ph.D. with a study on the energetics of grasshopper jumps from Heidelberg University. He then went on to work as a scientific assistant at various research institutes in Wilhelmshaven, Heligoland, and Hamburg, where he habilitated with a thesis on the ecology of fry in 1963.
Go to Profile#1793
Marten Scheffer
#43651
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Marten Scheffer is a Dutch ecologist, mathematical biologist and professor of Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management at Wageningen University and Research Centre. He was a winner of the 2009 Spinoza Prize. His research focuses on complex systems and their adaptability.
Go to Profile#1794
Melanie Brinkmann
#45993
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Melanie Brinkmann is a German virologist. Until 2019 she was probably best known in connection with her work on the Cytomegalovirus. During 2020 she has emerged as a much consulted expert-pundit for media commentators keen to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic. Brinkmann takes a robust public position in the campaign against pandemic misinformation: she has described the so-called "virus of false information" as "more deadly than the [COVID-19] virus itself".
Go to Profile#1795
Wendell L. Roelofs
#30887
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Wendell L. Roelofs was the first researcher to characterize insect sex pheromone structures, developing microchemical techniques for the isolation and identification of pheromone components. Education and career Roelofs obtained his BS in chemistry in 1960 from Central College in Pella, Iowa and his PhD in organic chemistry from Indiana University in 1964. He is the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Insect Biochemistry in the Department of Entomology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Go to Profile#1796
Frank Ambrose Beach
#55577
Overall Influence
#1797
Tsuguo Hongo
#29393
Overall Influence
1923 - 2007 (84 years)
Tsuguo Hongo was a Japanese mycologist who specialized in the biogeography and taxonomy of Agaricales. Hongo entered the Department of Biology at what is now Hiroshima University in 1943, where he studied botany until graduating in 1946 with a B.Sc. Hongo received his Ph.D. degree, entitled "Agaricales of Japan", from Kyoto University in 1961 while working under Dr. Shiro Kitamura.
Go to Profile#1798
Scott D. Emr
#52486
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Scott D. Emr is an American cell biologist and the founding and current Director of the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology at Cornell University, where he is also a Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Professor at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics.
Go to Profile#1799
Anirvan Ghosh
#25327
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Anirvan Ghosh is an American neuroscientist and Biotech executive. Ghosh is a professional in the fields of Neuroscience and Biotechnology. Prior to his current role as CEO of Unity Biotechnology, he held senior positions at several renowned institutions and companies. Ghosh served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and as Chair of Neurobiology at UCSD, where he made significant contributions in the field of Neuroscience. From 2011 to 2016, he served as the Global Head of Neuroscience Discovery at F. Hoffmann-La Roche. Ghosh was founding CSO of E-Scape Bio from 2016 to 2017 and served as the Head of Research and Early Development at Biogen from 2017 to 2020.
Go to Profile#1800
Denis Alexander
#18210
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Dr. Denis Alexander has spent 40 years in the biomedical research community. He is an Emeritus Fellow of St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge and an Emeritus Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge which he co-founded with Bob White in 2006.
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