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,
#17551
Vernon Lyman Kellogg
1867 - 1937 (70 years)
Vernon Lyman Kellogg was an American entomologist, evolutionary biologist, and science administrator. A major contribution was his study of bird lice and their hosts. He established the Department of Zoology at Stanford University in 1894, and served as the first permanent secretary of the National Research Council in Washington, DC.
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Sergei Navashin
1857 - 1930 (73 years)
Sergei Gavrilovich Navashin ; was a Russian Empire and Soviet biologist. He discovered double fertilization in plants in 1898. Biography 1874 — enters the Medical Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg, works on chemistry in the laboratory of A. Borodin
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Florence B. Seibert
1897 - 1991 (94 years)
Florence Barbara Seibert was an American biochemist. She is best known for identifying the active agent in the antigen tuberculin as a protein, and subsequently for isolating a pure form of tuberculin, purified protein derivative , enabling the development and use of a reliable TB test. Seibert has been inducted into the Florida Women's Hall of Fame and the National Women's Hall of Fame.
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Julius Arnold
1835 - 1915 (80 years)
Julius Arnold was a German pathologist born in Zurich. He was the son of anatomist Friedrich Arnold . He studied medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg, Prague, Vienna and Berlin, where he was a student of Rudolf Virchow . In 1859 he became a doctor of medicine, and in 1866 he became a professor of pathological anatomy and director of the institute of pathology at Heidelberg. Arnold was the author of 120 articles in the fields of histology and pathological anatomy.
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Johannes von Hanstein
1822 - 1880 (58 years)
Johannes Ludwig Emil Robert von Hanstein was a German botanist who was a native of Potsdam. He attended classes at the Gärtnerlehranstalt in Potsdam, and later studied sciences in Berlin, obtaining his doctorate in 1848. In 1855 he was a lecturer of botany at the University of Berlin, and six years later became curator of the royal herbarium. In 1865 he was appointed professor of botany at the University of Bonn and director of the botanical garden.
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Leopold Kny
1841 - 1916 (75 years)
Carl Ignaz Leopold Kny was a German botanist, notable as a specialist in research involving the morphology of fungi and cryptogams. He is well known for his production of the Botanische Wandtafeln.
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Gilbert Thomas Burnett
1800 - 1835 (35 years)
Gilbert Thomas Burnett was a British botanist. Life Burnett was the first professor of botany at King's College London, from 1831 to 1835. He was the author of Outlines of Botany , and Illustrations of Useful Plants employed in the Arts and Medicine, published posthumously and illustrated by his sister Mary Ann Burnett.
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Philipp Christoph Zeller
1808 - 1883 (75 years)
Philipp Christoph Zeller was a German entomologist. Zeller was born at Steinheim an der Murr, Württemberg, two miles from Marbach, the birthplace of Schiller. The family moved to Frankfurt where Philipp went to the gymnasium where natural history was not taught. Instead, helped by Alois Metzner, he taught himself entomology mainly by copying books. Copying and hence memorising, developed in response to early financial privation became a lifetime habit. Zeller went next to the University of Berlin where he became a candidat, which is the first degree, obtained after two or three years' study around 1833.
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Shen Kuo
1031 - 1095 (64 years)
Shen Kuo or Shen Gua, courtesy name Cunzhong and pseudonym Mengqi Weng , was a Chinese polymath, scientist, and statesman of the Song dynasty . Shen was a master in many fields of study including mathematics, optics, and horology. In his career as a civil servant, he became a finance minister, governmental state inspector, head official for the Bureau of Astronomy in the Song court, Assistant Minister of Imperial Hospitality, and also served as an academic chancellor. At court his political allegiance was to the Reformist faction known as the New Policies Group, headed by Chancellor Wang An...
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John Ray
1627 - 1705 (78 years)
John Ray FRS was a Christian English naturalist widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him". He published important works on botany, zoology, and natural theology. His classification of plants in his Historia Plantarum, was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the system of dichotomous division by which species were classified by repeated sub-division into groups according to a pre-conceive...
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William Turner
1832 - 1916 (84 years)
Sir William Turner was an English anatomist and was the Principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1903 to 1916. Life Turner was born in Lancaster the son of William Turner a relatively rich cabinetmaker, and his wife, Margaret Aldren. He was educated at various private schools, and then apprenticed to a local physician, Dr Christopher Johnston.
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Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis
1757 - 1808 (51 years)
Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis was a French physiologist, freemason and materialist philosopher. Life Cabanis was born at Cosnac , the son of Jean Baptiste Cabanis , a lawyer and agronomist. At the age of ten, he attended the college of Brives, where he showed great aptitude for study, but his independence of spirit was so great that he was almost constantly in a state of rebellion against his teachers and was finally expelled. He was then taken to Paris by his father and left to carry on his studies at his own discretion for two years. From 1773 to 1775 he travelled in Poland and Germany, and on his return to Paris he devoted himself mainly to poetry.
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Valerius Cordus
1515 - 1544 (29 years)
Valerius Cordus was a German physician, botanist and pharmacologist who authored the first pharmacopoeia North of the Alps and one of the most celebrated herbals in history. He is also widely credited with developing a method for synthesizing ether .
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Benjamin Smith Barton
1766 - 1815 (49 years)
Benjamin Smith Barton was an American botanist, naturalist, and physician. He was one of the first professors of natural history in the United States and built the largest collection of botanical specimens in the country. He wrote the first American textbook on botany.
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Paul Falkenberg
1848 - 1925 (77 years)
Paul Falkenberg was a German botanist. He was a professor of botany and Director of Botanical Garden Rostock. He was known for his works in anatomy and morphology of plants , and on the algae. Falkenberg dedicated much on the study to the most extensive and most difficult group red algae Rhodomelaceae .
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Augustus Addison Gould
1805 - 1866 (61 years)
Augustus Addison Gould was an American naturalist and the foremost conchologist of his era. He described over 1,100 new species of mollusks, including all known mollusks of Massachusetts and the shells collected by two major government exploring expeditions. He was one of the first naturalists in America to recognize the importance of geographic distribution in the description of species.
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Carl Georg Oscar Drude
1852 - 1933 (81 years)
Carl Georg Oscar Drude was a German botanist. From 1870 he studied science and chemistry at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig, relocating to the University of Göttingen the following year, where he was influenced by August Grisebach . In 1873 he obtained his PhD and subsequently served as an assistant to Friedrich Gottlieb Bartling .
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Karl Jordan
1861 - 1959 (98 years)
Heinrich Ernst Karl Jordan was a German-British entomologist. He took a special interest in the taxonomy and classification of butterflies, beetles and fleas. Jordan was a founder of the International Congress of Entomology.
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José Mariano Mociño
1757 - 1819 (62 years)
José Mariano Mociño Suárez Lozano , or simply José Mariano Mociño, was a naturalist from New Spain. After having studied philosophy and medicine, he conducted early research on the botany, geology, and anthropology of his country and other parts of North America.
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Otto Warburg
1859 - 1938 (79 years)
Otto Warburg was a German-Jewish botanist. He was also a notable industrial agriculture expert, and president of the Zionist Organization from 1911 to 1921. Biography Otto Warburg was born in Hamburg on 20 July 1859 to a family whose ancestors came to Germany in 1566, possibly from Bologna. He completed his studies at the Johanneum Gymnasium in Hamburg in 1879, and continued his education in the field of botany at the University of Bonn which he left after one semester to move to the University of Berlin, and later to University of Strasbourg, where he received his Ph.D in 1883. He went on to study chemistry in Munich and physiology in Tübingen with Wilhelm Pfeffer.
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George Nuttall
1862 - 1937 (75 years)
George Henry Falkiner Nuttall FRS was an American-British bacteriologist who contributed much to the knowledge of parasites and of insect carriers of diseases. He made significant innovative discoveries in immunology, about life under aseptic conditions, in blood chemistry, and about diseases transmitted by arthropods, especially ticks. He carried out investigations into the distribution of Anopheline mosquitoes in England in relation to the previous prevalence of malaria there. With William Welch he identified the organism responsible for causing gas gangrene.
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Adolf Meyer
1866 - 1950 (84 years)
Adolf Meyer was a Swiss-born psychiatrist who rose to prominence as the first psychiatrist-in-chief of the Johns Hopkins Hospital . He was president of the American Psychiatric Association in 1927–28 and was one of the most influential figures in psychiatry in the first half of the twentieth century. His focus on collecting detailed case histories on patients was one of the most prominent of his contributions. He oversaw the building and development of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital, opened in April 1913, making sure it was suitable for scientific research, training and treatment.
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Joseph Beal Steere
1842 - 1940 (98 years)
Joseph Beal Steere was an American ornithologist. Steere was born in Rollin, Michigan, the son of William Millhouse and Elizabeth Cleghorn Steere. He received a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1868 and a B. of Law in 1870.
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Edwin Hennig
1882 - 1977 (95 years)
Edwin Hennig was a German paleontologist. Career Edwin Hennig was one of five children of a merchant who died when Hennig was 10 years old. Starting in 1902, Hennig studied natural sciences, anthropology, and philosophy at the University of Freiburg in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany where earned a doctorate in 1906 with Otto Jaekel. This is where Hennig significantly contributed to research on the extinct genus Gyrodus.
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Theodor Eimer
1843 - 1898 (55 years)
Gustav Heinrich Theodor Eimer was a German zoologist. He was a popularizer of orthogenesis, a form of directed evolution through mutations that made use of Lamarckian principles. Life and work Eimer was born in Stäfa, Switzerland where his father, who had taken refuge following an attempted coup against the German Confederation in Frankfurt in 1833, practiced medicine. Eimer's mother, Albertine Pfenniger, was Swiss. After studying at gymnasiums in Bruchsal and Freiburg where his father worked, Eimer matriculated at Tübingen, where he was influenced by Franz von Leydig. He then studied from 1863 at Freiburg, and 1864 at Heidelberg to pass examinations in natural sciences.
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Erich Traub
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Erich Traub was a German veterinarian, scientist and virologist who specialized in foot-and-mouth disease, Rinderpest and Newcastle disease. Traub was a member of the National Socialist Motor Corps , a Nazi motorist corps, from 1938 to 1942. He worked directly for Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel , as the lab chief of the Nazis' leading bio-weapons facility on Riems Island.
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Jean Baptiste Carnoy
1836 - 1899 (63 years)
Jean Baptiste Carnoy , born in Rumillies , was a Roman Catholic priest and a scientist in the field of cytology. He made the initial explanation of the real nature of the albuminoid membrane, and conducted noted experiments on cellular segmentation.
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Carl Sternberg
1872 - 1935 (63 years)
Carl Sternberg was an Austrian pathologist. The Reed–Sternberg cell is named after him and American physician Dorothy Reed Mendenhall. Biography Education Sternberg studied medicine at the Medical faculty of the University of Vienna where he received his doctorate in 1896. He then completed training in general internal medicine at Vienna General Hospital and worked as an assistant to Richard Paltauf. He was habilitated for pathological anatomy in 1903.
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Fujiro Katsurada
1867 - 1946 (79 years)
Fujiro Katsurada was a Japanese parasitologist who discovered a parasite called Schistosoma japonicum. Biography He was born in 1867 to the home of a samurai in Kaga, Ishikawa, and his childhood name was Kohkichi Shoda . He graduated from Kanazawa Medical School, now the Faculty of Medicine, Kanazawa University in 1887, and entered the Department of Pathology at Tokyo University under Moriharu Miura . In the same year, he was adopted to Katsurada family, and his name was changed to Fujiro.
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Amos Arthur Heller
1867 - 1944 (77 years)
Amos Arthur Heller was an American botanist. Early life Heller was born in Danville, Pennsylvania. In 1892, Heller received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Franklin & Marshall College. In 1897, he received a Master's degree in Botany from Franklin & Marshall College.
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Paul Gervais
1816 - 1879 (63 years)
Paul Gervais full name François Louis Paul Gervais was a French palaeontologist and entomologist. Biography Gervais was born in Paris, where he obtained the diplomas of doctor of science and of medicine, and in 1835 he began palaeontological research as assistant in the laboratory of comparative anatomy at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. In 1841 he obtained the chair of zoology and comparative anatomy at the Faculty of Sciences in Montpellier, of which he was in 1856 appointed dean. In 1848–1852 appeared his important work Zoologie et paléontologie françaises, supplementary to the p...
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Anton Kerner von Marilaun
1831 - 1898 (67 years)
Anton Kerner Ritter von Marilaun, or Anton Joseph Kerner, was an Austrian botanist and professor at the University of Vienna. Career Kerner was born in Mautern, Lower Austria, and studied medicine in Vienna followed by an education in natural history, for which he carried out phytosociologic studies in Central Europe. In 1858 Kerner was appointed professor of botany at the Polytechnic Institute at Buda, and then in 1860 was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Innsbruck. He resigned the latter position in 1878 to become professor of systematic botany at the University of Vienna, and also curator of the botanical garden there.
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James Cossar Ewart
1851 - 1933 (82 years)
James Cossar Ewart FRS FRSE was a Scottish zoologist. He performed breeding experiments with horses and zebras which disproved earlier theories of heredity. Life Ewart was born in Penicuik, Midlothian, Scotland, the son of Jean Cossar and John Ewart, a joiner. He studied medicine from 1871 to 1874 at the University of Edinburgh where he graduated with an MB ChB. After graduation, he became an anatomy demonstrator under William Turner and then held the position of Curator of the Zoological Museum at University College, London, where he assisted Ray Lankester by making zoological preparations for the museum and providing teaching support for Lankester's course in practical zoology.
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Bruno Hofer
1861 - 1916 (55 years)
Bruno Hofer was a German fishery scientist, credited with being the founder of fish pathology. Career Hofer was born in Rhein in the Province of Prussia in 1861. He studied natural sciences at the University of Königsberg, receiving his doctorate in 1887 in Munich as a student of Richard Hertwig. He then worked as an assistant at the Zoological Institute of Munich, and in 1889 obtained his habilitation. He obtained a position at the Zoological Institute as a university lecturer and in 1891 acquired citizenship of the Kingdom of Bavaria. In 1894 he was appointed as a curator of the Zoologische...
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Jan Ingenhousz
1730 - 1799 (69 years)
Jan Ingenhousz or Ingen-Housz FRS was a Dutch-born British physiologist, biologist and chemist. He is best known for discovering photosynthesis by showing that light is essential to the process by which green plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. He also discovered that plants, like animals, have cellular respiration. In his lifetime he was known for successfully inoculating the members of the Habsburg family in Vienna against smallpox in 1768 and subsequently being the private counsellor and personal physician to the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa.
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Harry Seeley
1839 - 1909 (70 years)
Harry Govier Seeley was a British paleontologist. Early life Seeley was born in London on 18 February 1839, the second son of Richard Hovill Seeley, a goldsmith, and his second wife Mary Govier. When his father was declared bankrupt, Seeley was sent to live with a family of piano makers. Between the ages of eleven and fourteen, he went to a day school and then spent the next two years learning to make pianos. He also attended lectures at the Royal School of Mines by Thomas Henry Huxley, Edward Forbes, and other notable scientists. In 1855, with the support of his uncle, Seeley began to study law but shortly gave it up to pursue a career as an actuary.
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Samuel Frederick Gray
1766 - 1828 (62 years)
Samuel Frederick Gray was a British botanist, mycologist, and pharmacologist. He was the father of the zoologists John Edward Gray and George Robert Gray. Background He was the son of Samuel Gray, a London seedsman. He received no inheritance and, after failing to qualify for medicine, turned to medical and botanical writing. He married Elizabeth Forfeit in 1794 and moved to Walsall, Staffordshire, where he established an assay office before he moved back to London in 1800.
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Ioan Borcea
1879 - 1936 (57 years)
Ioan Borcea was a Romanian zoologist. Born in Buhoci, Bacău County, he entered secondary school at the National College in Iași before going on to the Costache Negruzzi Boarding High School, from which he graduated in 1897. He then entered the natural sciences section of Iași University's sciences faculty, graduating in 1900. Initially a teaching assistant in the animal morphology department, Borcea received a scholarship to study in France the following year. In 1903, he obtained an undergraduate degree from the natural sciences faculty of the Sorbonne. In 1905, the same institution awarded him a doctorate; his thesis dealt with the genitourinary system of the Elasmobranchii.
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Carl Eduard Adolph Gerstaecker
1828 - 1895 (67 years)
Carl Eduard Adolph Gerstaecker was a German zoologist, entomologist and professor at the University of Berlin and then the University of Greifswald. Biography Gerstaecker was born in Berlin, where he studied medicine and natural sciences, receiving his PhD in 1855 as a student of Johann Christoph Friedrich Klug. In 1856 he obtained his habilitation for zoology, and soon afterwards, became a curator at the Zoological Museum of Humboldt University. In 1864 he began work as a lecturer at the Landwirtschaftlichen Lehranstalt in Berlin. In 1874 he became an associate professor for zoology at the University of Berlin, and in 1876, a professor of zoology at the University of Greifswald.
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Oakes Ames
1874 - 1950 (76 years)
Oakes Ames was an American biologist specializing in orchids. His estate is now the Borderland State Park in Massachusetts. He was the son of Governor of Massachusetts Oliver Ames and grandson of Congressman Oakes Ames.
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Karl Langer
1819 - 1887 (68 years)
Karl Langer, Ritter von Edenberg was an Austrian anatomist. He is known for his work in the field of topographical anatomy. He studied medicine at the Universities of Vienna and Prague, afterwards working as a prosector in Vienna under Joseph Hyrtl . In 1856 he became a professor at the Josephinum, later serving as director of the second institute of anatomy at the University of Vienna . In 1874 he succeeded Hyrtl as director of the first institute of anatomy. With Christian August Voigt , he was tasked with planning for construction of a new Viennese anatomical institute.
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John Anderson
1833 - 1900 (67 years)
John Anderson was a Scottish anatomist and zoologist who worked in India as the curator of the Indian Museum, Calcutta. Early life Anderson was born in Edinburgh, the second son of Thomas Anderson, who worked in the National Bank of Scotland, and his wife Jane Cleghorn. He took an interest in natural history at an early age as did his brother Thomas Anderson, who worked at the Royal Botanic Garden in Calcutta from 1861 to 1863. He went to school at George Square Academy and Hill Street Institution before joining work at the Bank of Scotland. He left the bank to study medicine, and graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1861.
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Robert Collett
1842 - 1913 (71 years)
Robert Collett was a Norwegian zoologist. Collett was director and curator of the Zoological Museum at University of Oslo. Robert Collett was born at Christiania , Norway. He was the eldest child of Professor Peter Jonas Collett and Camilla Collett . His maternal uncles included Oscar and Henrik Wergeland, and his paternal uncles included Peter Severin Steenstrup. He had three younger brothers, including the writer and historian, Alf Collett. He never married.
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Charles Reid Barnes
1858 - 1910 (52 years)
Charles Reid Barnes was an American botanist specializing in bryophytes . He was co-editor of the Botanical Gazette for over 25 years. Barnes was born at Madison, Indiana, September 7, 1858. He graduated from Hanover College in 1877, and afterward studied at Harvard University, where he became friends with Asa Gray. After teaching in public schools for a few years, he became professor of botany at Purdue University in 1882. In 1887 he was called to the University of Wisconsin, and for eleven years developed and maintained a vigorous department of botany in that institution. In 1898 he bec...
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Christian Ernst Stahl
1848 - 1919 (71 years)
Christian Ernst Stahl was a German botanist who was a native of Schiltigheim, Alsace. Academic career He studied botany at the University of Strasbourg with Pierre-Marie-Alexis Millardet , and at the University of Halle under Anton de Bary . He earned his doctorate in 1874, and later became an assistant to Julius von Sachs at the University of Würzburg. He was appointed an associate professor at the University of Strasbourg, and after just one year, he attained the chair of botany at the University of Jena in 1881. Here, he also served as director of the botanical garden.
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Earl Douglass
1862 - 1931 (69 years)
Earl Douglass was an American paleontologist who discovered the dinosaur Apatosaurus, playing a central role in one of the most important fossil finds in North America. By 1922 Earl had unearthed and shipped more than 700,000 pounds of material including nearly 20 complete skeletons of Jurassic dinosaurs such as Diplodocus, Dryosaurus, Stegosaurus, Barosaurus, Camarasaurus and Brontosaurus.
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Henry Augustus Pilsbry
1862 - 1957 (95 years)
Henry Augustus Pilsbry was an American biologist, malacologist and carcinologist, among other areas of study. He was a dominant presence in many fields of invertebrate taxonomy for the better part of a century. For much of his career, his authority with respect to the classification of certain substantial groups of organisms was unchallenged: barnacles, chitons, North American terrestrial mollusks, and others.
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Joseph Paxton
1804 - 1865 (61 years)
Sir Joseph Paxton was an English gardener, architect, engineer and Member of Parliament, best known for designing the Crystal Palace and for cultivating the Cavendish banana, the most consumed banana in the Western world.
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Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild
1868 - 1937 (69 years)
Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild, was a British banker, politician, zoologist and soldier, who was a member of the Rothschild family. As a Zionist leader, he was presented with the Balfour Declaration, which pledged British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. Rothschild was the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1925 to 1926.
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Fernandus Payne
1881 - 1977 (96 years)
Fernandus Payne was an American zoologist, geneticist and educator. Panye was born in Shelbyville, Indiana. He received a B.Sc. from Valparaiso University in 1901 and a B.A. from Indiana University in 1905, and a M.A. in 1906. He undertook graduate studies at Columbia University with Thomas Hunt Morgan, his research took place when the use of fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster was being established in Morgan's lab. One of Payne's projects was to breed flies in the dark, if a generation of blind flies was produced then a model of Lamarckism would be confirmed. After producing 69 generation of flies grown in the dark Payne failed to produce a blind fly.
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