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,
#17851
Nicolae Leon
1862 - 1931 (69 years)
Nicolae Leon was a Romanian biologist. He was the elder half brother of the naturalist Grigore Antipa. Leon was born in Băiceni, a village in Curtești commune in Botoșani County. Starting in 1881 he studied at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Iași. In 1884 he went to the University of Jena to study zoology, obtaining his degree in 1887. After returning to Iași, he became a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in 1889. Later on he was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and then Rector of the University of Iași in 1918 and 1920-1921.
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Johann Amman
1707 - 1741 (34 years)
Johann Amman, Johannes Amman or Иоганн Амман was a Swiss-Russian botanist, a member of the Royal Society and professor of botany at the Russian Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg. Notable work He is best known for his Stirpium Rariorum in Imperio Rutheno Sponte Provenientium Icones et Descriptiones published in 1739 with descriptions of some 285 plants from Eastern Europe and Ruthenia . The plates are unsigned, though an engraving on the dedicatory leaf of the work is signed "Philipp Georg Mattarnovy", a Swiss-Italian engraver, Filippo Giorgio Mattarnovi , who worked at the St. Petersburg ...
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John William Heslop-Harrison
1881 - 1967 (86 years)
Prof John William Heslop Harrison, FRS FRSE , was Professor of Botany at King's College, Durham University . He enjoyed a brilliant career, specialising in the genetics of moths, but is now best remembered for an alleged academic fraud.
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Spencer Le Marchant Moore
1850 - 1931 (81 years)
Spencer Le Marchant Moore was an English botanist. Biography Moore was born in Hampstead. He worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, from about 1870 to 1879, wrote a number of botanical papers, and then worked in an unofficial capacity at the Natural History Museum from 1896 until his death.
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Eleanor Anne Ormerod
1828 - 1901 (73 years)
Eleanor Anne Ormerod was a pioneer English entomologist. Based on her studies in agriculture, she became one of the first to define the field of agricultural entomology. She published an influential series of articles on useful insects and pests in the Gardeners' Chronicle and the Agricultural Gazette along with annual reports from 1877 to 1900. These annual reports were produced by summarizing information provided by her network of correspondents from across Britain. Belonging to the landed gentry, she worked as an honorary consulting entomologist with the Royal Agricultural Society of England and received no pay for any of her work.
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Eduard Paul Tratz
1888 - 1977 (89 years)
Eduard Paul Tratz was an Austrian zoologist. Ahnenerbe Tratz was the founder of Salzburg's Haus der Natur, one of the leading museums of natural history in Austria, in 1924. A member of the Nazi Party, he ensured significant funding for the museum after the Anschluss and spent much of it adding eight new areas dealing with such topics as eugenics and racial hygiene. He played a leading role in helping to popularise "Rassenkunde" in Austria and was also a departmental head in the Ahnenerbe .
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Rolf Nordhagen
1894 - 1979 (85 years)
Rolf Nordhagen was a Norwegian botanist. His greatest scientific efforts were in the area of plant sociology. Personal life Rolf Nordhagen was born in Kristiania as a son of artist Johan Nordhagen and Christine Magdalene, née Johansen . He was a brother of Olaf Nordhagen and Martha Gladtved-Prahl. In August 1925 in Oslo he married Elisabeth Marie Myhre . He was the father of art historian Per Jonas Nordhagen and computer scientist, Rolf Nordhagen .
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Hippolyte Lucas
1814 - 1899 (85 years)
Pierre-Hippolyte Lucas was a French entomologist. Lucas was an assistant-naturalist at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. From 1839 to 1842 he studied fauna as part of the scientific commission on the exploration of Algeria.
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Kristian Horn
1903 - 1981 (78 years)
Kristian Horn was a Norwegian botanist and humanist. Biography He was born in Brandbu as a son of store owner Martinius Horn and Gina Kristoffersen . In 1932 he married Ester Jynge, a daughter of railway director Andreas Grimelund Jynge. Their son Per Kristian Horn became a scenographer, and was formerly married to Ellen Horn. Kristian Horn is also a grandfather of Anders Horn.
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Anton Wilhelm Plaz
1708 - 1784 (76 years)
Anton Wilhelm Plaz was a German physician and botanist. From 1723 he studied medicine at the universities of Leipzig and Halle, receiving his doctorate at the latter institution in 1728. In 1733 he became an associate professor of botany at Leipzig, where afterwards, he successively served as a full professor of botany , physiology , anatomy and surgery , pathology and therapy . From 1773 to 1784 he was dean to the medical faculty at the university. He was a member of the Römisch Kaiserlichen Akademie der Naturforscher.
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Nikolaus Poda von Neuhaus
1723 - 1798 (75 years)
Nikolaus Poda von Neuhaus is best known for his work in the field of entomology in the middle to late 1700s. Born October 4, 1723, in Vienna, Austria, to a noble family of Austrian descent, Nikolaus Poda von Neuhaus studied across his home country for years before working as a professor at multiple universities in both Hungary and Austria until his death on April 29, 1798.
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Wilhelm Ferdinand Erichson
1809 - 1848 (39 years)
Dr Wilhelm Ferdinand Erichson was a trained medical doctor and a German entomologist. He was the author of many articles about insects mainly in Archiv für Naturgeschichte. When writing in Latin, he latinised Wilhelm to Guillelmus becoming either Guil. F. Erichson or G.F. Erichson. He wrote a paper in 1842 on insect species collected at Woolnorth in Tasmania, Australia, which was the first detailed research published on the biogeography of Australian animals and was very influential in raising scientific interest in Australian fauna.
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Moritz August Seubert
1818 - 1878 (60 years)
Moritz August Seubert was a German botanist. Life Seubert was the son of a medical officer of health. He first attended the Lyzeum in Karlsruhe and already at that time had contact with the botanist, Alexander Braun, who interested him in this subject. As of 1836, he studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg and then in 1837, he studied natural science at the University of Bonn. His teachers in Bonn were Georg August Goldfuss, Ludolph Christian Treviranus and Johann Jakob Nöggerath. After receiving his PhD in Bonn, he moved to the University of Berlin, where he qualified as a professor.
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Hiroshi Nakamura
1890 - 1974 (84 years)
Hiroshi Nakamura was a Japanese biochemist known for first suggesting that Nickel may be a dietary element. He made a great contribution to the understanding of dietary element. In addition, he was one of Japan's most accomplished historians of cartography.
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Frank W. Newell
#17866
Johann Baptist Friedreich
1796 - 1862 (66 years)
Johann Baptist Friedreich was a German forensic physician and psychiatrist. He was a prominent member of the so-called "somatic school" of psychiatry in Germany. He was the son of physician Nicolaus Anton Friedreich , and the father of pathologist Nikolaus Friedreich .
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Sebald Justinus Brugmans
1763 - 1819 (56 years)
Sebald Justinus Brugmans was a Dutch botanist and physician. He was the son of naturalist Anton Brugmans . Brugmans studied philosophy, mathematics and physics at the Universities of Franeker and Groningen, earning his doctorate in 1781. In 1785 he became a professor at Franeker, where he taught classes in physics, astronomy, logic and metaphysics. During the following year, he succeeded David van Royen as professor of botany at the University of Leiden. At Leiden, he also served as director of the "Hortus Botanicus Leiden". In 1791, he transferred from the Faculty of Philosophy to that of Medicine, of which, from 1795, included the field of chemistry.
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Arthur Maillefer
1880 - 1960 (80 years)
Arthur Maillefer was a Swiss botanist and plant geographer. He studied numerous classic botanical disciplines, including plant systematics and floristics. He also was very modern in his use of numerical analysis and mathematics. For instance, he made one of the earliest null models in biogeography showing that - in records of plant or animal species over space - genera accumulate much faster than species and thereby refuting Paul Jaccard's interpretation of the species-to-genus ratio in Jaccard's dispute with Alvar Palmgren. Maillefer's statistical solution to the problem was later supported ...
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Christian Friedrich Ludwig
1751 - 1823 (72 years)
Christian Friedrich Ludwig was a German physician and naturalist. He was the son of botanist Christian Gottlieb Ludwig . He studied medicine at the University of Leipzig, where in 1779 he obtained his habilitation. In 1780/81 he took a study trip to southern Germany, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands and England. Afterwards in Leipzig, he became an associate professor of medicine and natural history . In 1796 he was named a full professor of pathology, and he later attained professorships in therapy and materia medica and surgery . On two separate occasions he served as rector at the Uni...
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Ludwig Lorenz von Liburnau
1856 - 1943 (87 years)
Ludwig Lorenz von Liburnau was an Austrian zoologist. He was the son of naturalist Josef Roman Lorenz von Liburnau . In 1879 he obtained his PhD from the University of Vienna, receiving his habilitation in zoology in 1898. From 1880 to 1922 he was associated with the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna.
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Günther Beck von Mannagetta und Lerchenau
1856 - 1931 (75 years)
Günther Ritter Beck von Mannagetta und Lerchenau was an Austrian botanist. Life Ritter Beck-Mannagetta, son of a state prosecutor, studied at the University of Vienna, where he graduated as Dr. phil. in 1878.
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Julius Caesar Aranzi
1530 - 1589 (59 years)
Julius Caesar Aranzi was a leading figure in the history of the science of human anatomy. He was born in Bologna, the son of Ottaviano di Jacopo and Maria Maggi. Owing to the poverty of the family, he studied with his uncle Bartolomeo Maggi , a famous surgeon who was a lecturer at the University of Bologna as well as court physician to Julius III. He held this uncle in such high esteem that he assumed his surname, calling himself Giulio Cesare Aranzio Maggio.
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Johannes Iversen
1904 - 1971 (67 years)
Johannes Iversen was a Danish palaeoecologist and plant ecologist. Biography He was born in Sønderborg and began studies in botany at the University of Copenhagen in 1923 under professor C.H. Ostenfeld, and with considerable inspiration from prof.em. Christen Raunkiær. At first he worked with macrophyte vegetation of lakes in relation to water pH. The influence from Raunkiær is particularly evident in Iversen's doctoral thesis, in which he divided herbaceous plants into hydrotypes based on experiments and morphological studies: xerophytes, mesophytes, hygrophytes, telmatophytes, amphiphytes and limnophytes.
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Horatio Burt Williams
1877 - 1955 (78 years)
Horatio Burt Williams was an American clinical electrophysiologist. Life Williams was born on September 17, 1877, in Utica, New York. For college studies Williams chose physics. He went to Syracuse University to study medicine, graduating as medical doctor in 1905. As an assistant in physiology at Cornell Medical School, he began his work in electrophysiology. He published an article on electrocardiograms. Williams traveled to Holland to study the methods of Willem Einthoven in 1911.
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Klaus Immelmann
1935 - 1987 (52 years)
Klaus Immelmann was a German ethologist and ornithologist. He undertook field research in Africa and Australia, and published works in German and English. His second and third visit to South Africa were in 1969 and 1971. Immelmann became a permanent executive member of the International Ornithological Union, and its president in 1986. He is the author of Australian finches in bush and aviary , regarded as the first standard text on the subject, and a study of comparative biology of estrildid finches in Australia. His first visit to Australia was in the late 1950s, shortly after receiving his PhD.
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Kinichiro Sakaguchi
1897 - 1994 (97 years)
Kinichiro Sakaguchi was a Japanese agricultural chemist and microbiologist. He was born in Niigata prefecture. He is the inventor of the Sakaguchi flask, a round-bottom long-neck shake flask. In Jōetsu, Niigata, a sake museum has a part of its exhibition dedicated to him.
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Robert Cyril Layton Perkins
1866 - 1955 (89 years)
Robert Cyril Layton Perkins FRS was a distinguished British entomologist, ornithologist, and naturalist noted for his work on the fauna of the islands of Hawaii and on Hymenoptera. He is not to be confused with his son John Frederick Perkins, also a hymenopterist.
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Anatoli Bogdanov
1834 - 1896 (62 years)
Anatoli Petrovich Bogdanov was a Russian Empire zoologist and a pioneer of physical anthropology. He served as a professor of zoology at Moscow University. He was influential in the establishment of Moscow zoo.
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Karl Koch
1809 - 1879 (70 years)
Karl Heinrich Emil Koch was a German botanist. He is best known for his botanical explorations in the Caucasus region, including northeast Turkey. Most of his collections have today been lost. He is also known as the first professional horticultural officer in Germany.
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Karl von Seebach
1839 - 1880 (41 years)
Karl Albert Ludwig von Seebach was a German geologist known for his studies in the field of volcanology. He studied geology and paleontology at Breslau as a pupil of Ferdinand von Roemer, with whom he took a scientific journey to Russia. He also studied at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin, where he was a student of Heinrich Ernst Beyrich. In 1862 he obtained his doctorate at Göttingen with a thesis on conch-fauna of the Weimar Triassic. In 1870 he became a full professor at Göttingen and subsequently chosen as the first director of the geological-palaeontological institute.
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Gerald Francis Yeo
1845 - 1909 (64 years)
Gerald Francis Yeo was an Irish physiologist and academic. Life Born in Dublin on 19 January 1845, he was second son of Henry Yeo of Tansey, Ceanchor Road, Howth, J.P., clerk of the rules, court of exchequer, by his wife Jane, daughter of Captain Ferns. Yeo was educated at the Royal School Dungannon, and at Trinity College Dublin, where he graduated moderator in natural science in 1866, proceeding M.B. and M.Ch. in 1867. In 1868 he gained the gold medal of the Dublin Pathological Society for an essay on renal disease. After studying abroad for three years, a year each in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, he proceeded M.D.
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Leopold Dippel
1827 - 1914 (87 years)
Georg Heinrich Leopold Dippel was a German botanist. He was the son of a royal Bavarian forester, Carl Friedrich Peter Dippel, and Sussanna Purpus. He attended schools in Kaiserslautern and Zweibrücken. From 1845, he studied at the Academy of Forestry in Aschaffenburg, until he graduated in 1848. During his time there he was a member of the Munich Corps Hubertia fraternity. He continued his studies in Jena under the tutelage of Matthias Jacob Schleiden. Under him, he learned more extensively about botany and pioneered his work in microscopy and his research on the structure of plant's bodies....
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David Evans
1909 - 1984 (75 years)
Sir David Gwynne Evans FRS was a British microbiologist. Early life He was born at 15 Kay Street, Atherton, Lancashire. His father was a headmaster and his mother a schoolteacher. They had four children and his elder brother, Meredith, was a professor at Leeds and Manchester Universities and also a Fellow of the Royal Society. His other brother, A. G. Evans became professor of chemistry at University College, Cardiff.
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Karl Theodor Fahr
1877 - 1945 (68 years)
Karl Theodor Fahr was a German pathologist born in Pirmasens of the Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1903 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Giessen, afterwards continuing his studies with Eugen Bostroem in Giessen, under Morris Simmonds in Hamburg and with Ilya Ilyich Metchnikoff in Paris. In 1924, he became director of the pathological institute at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.
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Paul Graebner
1871 - 1933 (62 years)
Carl Otto Robert Peter Paul Graebner was a German botanist. In 1895 he obtained his doctorate in Berlin, successively working as an assistant and then as curator at the botanical gardens. During the 1890s he performed botanical investigations in Jerichower Land and Vorharz with Paul Ascherson .
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Johann Nepomuk von Laicharting
1754 - 1797 (43 years)
Johann Nepomuk von Laicharting was an Austrian entomologist. He was born in Innsbruck on 4 February 1754 and died in the same city on 7 May 1797, and was a Professor of Natural Science in Innsbruck. He described new species and genera of Coleoptera in Verzeichniss und Beschreibung der Tyroler-Insecten. 1. Teil. Kaferartige Insecten. 1. Band. 1781: I-XII, 1-248. - Zurich, bey Johann Casper Fuessly 1781. In English, lists and descriptions of Tyrol insects - beetles. Presumably this was intended to cover all Austrian insects but no further parts were published.
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Heinrich Schenck
1860 - 1927 (67 years)
Johann Heinrich Rudolf Schenck was a German botanist who was a native of Siegen. He was a brother to geographer Adolf Schenck . Heinrich Schenck initially studied natural sciences at the University of Bonn , then continued his studies in Berlin under August Wilhelm Eichler and Simon Schwendener . Later he returned to Bonn as a student of Eduard Strasburger , receiving his doctorate in 1884. In 1889 he became a lecturer in Bonn, and in 1896 relocated to the Polytechnic Institute of Darmstadt, where he was appointed director of the botanical garden.
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Friedrich Kasimir Medikus
1736 - 1808 (72 years)
Friedrich Kasimir Medikus was a German physician and botanist. He was born at Grumbach and became director of the University of Mannheim and curator of the botanical garden at Mannheim. He encouraged the cultivation of locust trees in Europe.
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Ernest Melville DuPorte
1891 - 1981 (90 years)
Ernest Melville DuPorte was a Canadian entomologist best known for his research in insect morphology. He has been described as "a father of confederation for entomology" by Robin Stewart. Early life DuPorte was born in 1891 in Nevis, one of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean that was then part of the British West Indies. He began his education at the Charlestown Boys Primary School in Charlestown, where he excelled and drew the attention of H.C. Huggins, who awarded him a scholarship for secondary school studies at St. Kitts-Nevis Grammar School in Basseterre.
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Sven Nilsson
1787 - 1883 (96 years)
Sven Nilsson was a Swedish zoologist and archaeologist. Life and work Nilsson was director of the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet from 1828 to 1831, professor of Natural History at Lund University from 1832 to 1856, and rector of Lund University from 1845 to 1846.
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John N. Danesh
#17892
Bohumil Shimek
1861 - 1937 (76 years)
Bohumil Shimek was an American naturalist, conservationist, and a professor at the University of Iowa. The Shimek State Forest in Iowa is named after him. Life Family and early life Shimek was born on a farm near Shueyville, Iowa to Czech parents, Maria Theresa and Francis Joseph Shimek, who came to the United States to escape religious and political persecution under the Austrian Empire. In 1866, the family moved to Iowa City to have access to medical care for his mother, who was suffering from tuberculosis. However, she succumbed to the disease soon afterwards. Shimek's father worked as a cobbler.
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Antonín Frič
1832 - 1913 (81 years)
Antonín Jan Frič was a Czech paleontologist, biologist and geologist, living during the Austria-Hungary era. Professor at the Charles University and later became director of the National Museum in Prague. He became famous for his contributions on the field of Permo - Carboniferous ecosystems.
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George Vasey
1822 - 1893 (71 years)
George Vasey was an English-born American botanist who collected a lot in Illinois before integrating the United States Department of Agriculture , where he became Chief Botanist and curator of the greatly expanded National Herbarium.
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Ransom Asa Moore
1861 - 1941 (80 years)
Professor Ransom Asa Moore was an agronomist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was born 1861 in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin and died in 1941 in Madison, Wisconsin. He has been called "Father of Wisconsin 4-H", the builder and "Daddy" of the Agriculture Short Course Program, and the Father of the Agronomy Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agriculture.
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Tang Feifan
1897 - 1958 (61 years)
Tang Feifan was a Chinese medical microbiologist best known for culturing the Chlamydia trachomatis agent in the yolk sacs of eggs. Tang was persecuted during the "Pulling Out Bourgeois White Flag Movement" and committed suicide in 1958.
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Paul Grawitz
1850 - 1932 (82 years)
Paul Albert Grawitz was a German pathologist. He was an older brother to hematologist Ernst Grawitz , and father-in-law to pathologist Otto Busse . While he studied medicine at the University of Berlin, he was an assistant to pathologist Rudolf Virchow . After graduation, he continued as an assistant to Virchow until 1886. From 1886 to 1921 he taught as a professor at the University of Greifswald, where he also served as director of the pathological institute.
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Robert Harold Compton
1886 - 1979 (93 years)
Robert Harold Compton was a South African botanist. The Compton Herbarium at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, which he founded in Cape Town in 1939, was named in his honour. Career He attended Cambridge University from 1905 to 1909, attaining a double first class and distinction and later an M.A. He stayed on at Cambridge from 1911 to 1913 as a Demonstrator in Botany, and joined a field expedition to New Caledonia in 1914, collecting extensively and discovering some new genera and species. While at Cambridge, his main publications were in the area of anatomy and morphology of Gymnosperms, Pteridophytes and Angiosperm seedlings.
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Clara Eaton Cummings
1855 - 1906 (51 years)
Clara Eaton Cummings was an American cryptogamic botanist and Hunnewell Professor of Cryptogamic Botany at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Life and education Cummings was born in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on July 13, 1855 to Noah Conner and Elmira George Cummings. In 1876, she enrolled at the women's liberal arts college Wellesley, only one year after the opening of the institution.
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William Smith Greenfield
1846 - 1919 (73 years)
William Smith Greenfield FRSE FRCPE LLD was a British anatomist. He was an expert on anthrax. Life He was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire on 9 January 1846. He studied Medicine at the University of London graduating MB BS in 1872. In 1878 he succeeded John Burdon-Sanderson as Professor of Pathology at the Brown Institute. In 1881 he went to Edinburgh to become Professor of Pathology and Clinical Medicine.
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