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.
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List of the most influential people in Biology,
#17901
Christian Eduard Langethal
1806 - 1878 (72 years)
Christian Eduard Langethal was a German botanist and agronomist. He is known for his writings involving agricultural botany and agricultural history. Beginning in 1827 he studied natural sciences at the University of Jena. During the winter term of 1834/35 he began teaching classes in natural history at the recently built scientific academy at Eldena , where he worked closely with his former teacher, Friedrich Gottlob Schulze . In 1839, with Schulze, he returned to the University of Jena as an associate professor of botany. At Jena he distinguished himself in studies of botany as it applied ...
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David Don
1799 - 1841 (42 years)
David Don was a Scottish botanist. Biography David Don was born on 21 December 1799 at Doo Hillock, Forfar, Angus, Scotland to Caroline Clementina Stuart, and her husband George Don of Forfar. His older brother was George Don, also a botanist. His father was a curator at the Royal Botanic Garden, Leith Walk, Edinburgh. Don was Professor of Botany at King's College London from 1836 to 1841, and librarian at the Linnean Society of London from 1822 to 1841.
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Robert Morison
1620 - 1683 (63 years)
Robert Morison was a Scottish botanist and taxonomist. A forerunner of John Ray, he elucidated and developed the first systematic classification of plants. Biography Born in Aberdeen, Morison was an outstanding scholar who gained his Master of Arts degree from the University of Aberdeen at the age of eighteen. During the English Civil War he joined the Charles I of England's Cavaliers and was seriously wounded at the 1639 Battle of the Bridge of Dee during the Civil War. On recovering, he fled to France when it became apparent that the cause was lost. In 1648, he took a doctorate in medicine...
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Wilhelm Knop
1817 - 1891 (74 years)
Wilhelm Knop was a German agrochemist and co-founder of modern water culture. Alongside Julius von Sachs, he identified nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and iron as essential elements for plant nutrition. Knop and von Sachs pioneered the use of standardized nutrient solutions in experimental plant physiology.
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Carl von Voit
1831 - 1908 (77 years)
Carl von Voit was a German physiologist and dietitian. Biography Voit was born in Amberg, the son of August von Voit and Mathilde Burgett. From 1848 to 1854 he studied at the universities of Munich and Würzburg. At Munich, his teachers were Justus von Liebig and Max Joseph Pettenkofer, and at Würzburg, he was a pupil of Albert von Kölliker. In 1855 he furthered his education at the University of Göttingen under chemist Friedrich Wohler, and in 1856/57 served as an assistant to Theodor von Bischoff in Munich. In 1857, he obtained his habilitation, and from 1863 was a full professor of physiolo...
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Hugo Kronecker
1839 - 1914 (75 years)
Karl Hugo Kronecker was a German physiologist from Liegnitz, Prussian Silesia. He was the brother of Leopold Kronecker. He studied medicine in Berlin, Heidelberg and Pisa, and received the M.D. degree in Berlin. From 1868, he worked in the Leipzig Physiological Institute,
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Karl Moritz Schumann
1851 - 1904 (53 years)
Karl Moritz Schumann was a German botanist. Schumann was born in Görlitz. He was curator of the Botanisches Museum in Berlin-Dahlem from 1880 until 1894. He also served as the first chairman of the Deutsche Kakteen-Gesellschaft which he founded on 6 November 1892. He died in Berlin.
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Johann Jakob Bernhardi
1774 - 1850 (76 years)
Johann Jakob Bernhardi was a German doctor and botanist. Biography Johann J. Bernhardi studied Medicine and Botany at the University of Erfurt, and after graduation practiced medicine for a time in his native city. In 1799 he was named director of the botanical garden at Gartenstraße, and in 1809 was appointed professor of botany, zoology, mineralogy and materia medica at the university. He served as director of the botanical garden until his death in 1850, being buried in the central avenue of this botanical garden.
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Rudolf Jakob Camerarius
1665 - 1721 (56 years)
Rudolf Jakob Camerarius or Camerer was a German botanist and physician. Life Camerarius was born at Tübingen, and became professor of medicine and director of the botanical gardens at Tübingen in 1687. He is chiefly known for his investigations on the reproductive organs of plants .
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Karl Friedrich Heusinger
1792 - 1883 (91 years)
Karl Friedrich Heusinger was a German pathologist who was a native of Farnroda. He studied medicine in Jena and Marburg, and afterwards was an assistant to Karl Gustav Himly at the University of Göttingen. In 1813 he served as a military doctor in the Prussian Army, and later was a professor at the Universities of Jena , Würzburg and Marburg .
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Michael Denis
1729 - 1800 (71 years)
Johann Nepomuk Cosmas Michael Denis, also: Sined the Bard, was an Austrian Catholic priest and Jesuit, who is best known as a poet, bibliographer, and lepidopterist. Life Denis was born at Schärding, located on the Inn River, then ruled by the Electorate of Bavaria, in 1729, the son of Johann Rudolph Denis, who taught him Latin at an early age. At the age of ten, he was enrolled to be educated by the Jesuits at their college in Passau. After completing his studies in 1747, he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Vienna.
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Alex B. Novikoff
1913 - 1987 (74 years)
Alex Benjamin Novikoff was a Russian Empire-born American biologist who is recognized for his pioneering works in the discoveries of cell organelles. A victim of American Cold War antagonism to communism that he supported, he is also recognized as a public figure of the mid-20th century at the height of McCarthyism in America. As his original discoveries such as cell organelles and autophagy earned other scientists Nobel Prizes, he is regarded as one of the overlooked scientists to get Nobel Prize.
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Maximilian Braun
1850 - 1930 (80 years)
Maximilian Christian Gustav Carl Braun was a German anatomist and zoologist, who specialized in the field of parasitology. He studied medicine and natural sciences at the universities of Greifswald and Würzburg, receiving his medical doctorate in 1874 and his PhD in 1877. From 1880 he worked as a prosector at the institute of comparative anatomy in Dorpat, and in 1883 became an associate professor. Later on, he served as a full professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the universities of Rostock and Königsberg . At Königsberg, he was director of the zoological museum. In 1916/17 he se...
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John Lawrence LeConte
1825 - 1883 (58 years)
John Lawrence LeConte was an American entomologist, responsible for naming and describing approximately half of the insect taxa known in the United States during his lifetime, including some 5,000 species of beetles. He was recognized as the foremost authority on North American beetles during his career, and has been described as "the father of American beetle study".
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Julia Bell
1879 - 1979 (100 years)
Julia Bell was a pioneering English human geneticist. Biography She attended Girton College in Cambridge and took the Mathematical Tripos exam in 1901. But because women could not officially receive degrees from Oxford or Cambridge, she was awarded a master's degree at Trinity College, Dublin for her work investigating solar parallax at Cambridge Observatory. In 1908, she moved to University College London and obtained a position there as an assistant in statistics.
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Nelson Annandale
1876 - 1924 (48 years)
Thomas Nelson Annandale CIE FRSE was a British zoologist, entomologist, anthropologist, and herpetologist. He was the founding director of the Zoological Survey of India. Life The eldest son of Thomas Annandale, the regius professor of clinical surgery at the University of Edinburgh. His maternal grandfather was a publisher, William Nelson. Thomas was educated at Rugby School, Balliol College, Oxford where he studied under Ray Lankester and E. B. Tylor , and at the University of Edinburgh where he studied anthropology, receiving a D.Sc. . As a student he made visits to Iceland and the Faeroe Islands.
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Desmond Herbert
1898 - 1976 (78 years)
Desmond Andrew Herbert was an Australian botanist. The son of a fruit-grower, Herbert was born in Diamond Creek, Victoria in 1898; was educated at Malvern State School and the Melbourne Church of England Grammar School, then matriculated to the University of Melbourne, from which he obtained a BSc in Biology in 1918 and a MSc in Botany in 1920. He was a nephew of Melbourne art collector and philanthropist John Henry Connell, who helped fund his education.
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Jacob B. Winslow
1669 - 1760 (91 years)
Jacob Benignus Winsløw, also known as Jacques-Bénigne Winslow , was a Danish-born French anatomist. Life Winsløw was born in Odense, Denmark. Later he became a pupil and successor of Guichard Joseph Duverney, as well as a convert to Catholicism, naturalized in France, and finally became professor of anatomy at the Jardin du Roi in Paris.
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Émile Brumpt
1877 - 1951 (74 years)
Alexandre Joseph Émile Brumpt was a French parasitologist. He studied zoology and parasitology in Paris, obtaining his degree in science in 1901, and his medical doctorate in 1906. In 1919 he succeeded Raphaël Blanchard as professor of parasitology to the Faculté de Médecine de Paris, a position he maintained until 1948. Much of his career was spent performing research in Africa and Latin America.
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Fredrik Adam Smitt
1839 - 1904 (65 years)
Fredrik Adam Smitt, , was a Swedish zoologist. Biography Smitt studied in Lund and Uppsala where he received his doctorate in 1863. In 1861 and 1868 He participated in the Swedish expeditions to Svalbard. In 1871 he was appointed professor at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, where he was in charge of the Department of Vertebrates. From 1879 he also taught zoology at Stockholm University.
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Samuel Friedrich Stein
1818 - 1885 (67 years)
Samuel Friedrich Nathaniel Ritter von Stein was a German entomologist. He was Professor at the Royal Saxon Academy of Forestry in Tharandt from 1850–55; and Professor, and later Rector, at the Charles University in Prague, from 1855–76. His scientific work focused on invertebrates, and mainly on Diptera.
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Heinrich von Bamberger
1822 - 1888 (66 years)
Heinrich von Bamberger was an Austrian pathologist. He was father to internist Eugen von Bamberger . Biography In 1847 he earned his doctorate from the University of Prague, and from 1851 to 1854 was a clinical assistant to Johann von Oppolzer in Vienna. In 1854 he became professor of therapeutic pathology at the University of Würzburg, returning to the University of Vienna in 1872, where he succeeded Oppolzer as professor of special pathology and therapy. Among his assistants in Vienna was internist Edmund von Neusser . Bamberger was a specialist in respiratory and circulatory pathology, r...
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Hans Rebel
1861 - 1940 (79 years)
Hans Rebel was an Austrian entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera. Rebel, who had an early interest in natural history and butterflies, first became a lawyer. He devoted his spare time to studying Lepidoptera and established the entomological section of the Botanical and Zoological Society of Vienna. He succeeded Alois Friedrich Rogenhofer as keeper of the Lepidoptera collection of the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, a post he held from 1897 to 1932. Rebel enriched the collections and as a grand voyageur, made many collecting trips in Austro-Hungary and five trips in the Balkans. ...
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Ruth F. Allen
1879 - 1963 (84 years)
Ruth Florence Allen was an American botanist and plant pathologist and the first woman to earn her Ph.D. in botany from the University of Wisconsin. Her doctorate research focused on the reproduction and cell biology of ferns, particularly the phenomenon of apogamy . Later in her career, Allen shifted her focus to plant pathology. Her major contribution to the field of mycology was furthering the understanding of rust fungi, a group of economically important plant pathogens. Allen completed many studies on Puccinia graminis, once considered a catastrophically damaging disease-causing agent i...
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Octavius Pickard-Cambridge
1828 - 1917 (89 years)
Octavius Pickard-Cambridge FRS was an English clergyman and zoologist. He was a keen arachnologist who described and named more than 900 species of spider. Life and work Pickard-Cambridge was born in Bloxworth rectory, Dorset, the fifth son of Rev. George Pickard, rector and squire of Bloxworth: the family changed its name to Pickard-Cambridge in 1848 after receiving the property left behind by a relative, Charles Owen Cambridge, of Whitminster House in Gloucestershire. Octavius was tutored at home by the poet William Barnes, after failing to receive admission to Winchester College. He also learned to play the violin from Sidney Smith.
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Martin Benno Schmidt
1863 - 1949 (86 years)
Martin Benno Schmidt was a German pathologist born in Leipzig. He spent several years as an assistant at the University of Strasbourg, where he worked under Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen . In 1906 he became a professor of pathology at the medical academy in Düsseldorf, and afterwards worked as a pathologist in Zurich and Marburg. In 1913 he succeeded Richard Kretz as professor of pathology at the University of Würzburg, a position he maintained until his retirement in 1934.
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Eduard Weber
1806 - 1871 (65 years)
Eduard Friedrich Weber was a German anatomist and physiologist. He was a younger brother to physiologist Ernst Heinrich Weber and physicist Wilhelm Eduard Weber . Weber was born in Wittenberg. He studied medicine at the University of Halle, receiving his doctorate in 1829. From 1836 he served as prosector in the anatomical institute at the University of Leipzig, where in 1838 he became privat-docent with a thesis involving physiological studies on the "galvano-magnetic phenomena" in humans. From 1847 to 1871 he was an associate professor at Leipzig.
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Benjamin Lincoln Robinson
1864 - 1935 (71 years)
Benjamin Lincoln Robinson was an American botanist. Biography Robinson was born on November 8, 1864, in Bloomington, Illinois. In 1887, he received an A.B. from Harvard. He married Margaret Louise Casson on June 29, 1887, and couple traveled to Europe. He studied plant anatomy with H. Solms-Laubach and completed his Dr.phil. at University of Strasbourg in 1889. They returned to the United States in the fall of 1890. Most of his career was Gray Herbarium curator and he died at his summer home in Jaffrey, New Hampshire on July 27, 1935.
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Johannes Theodor Reinhardt
1816 - 1882 (66 years)
Johannes Theodor Reinhardt was a Danish zoologist and herpetologist. He was the son of Johannes Christopher Hagemann Reinhardt. Biography He participated as botanist in the first Galathea Expedition . In 1848 he became a curator at the Kongelige Naturhistoriske Museum in Copenhagen . He taught classes in zoology at the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet and at the University of Copenhagen . In 1854 he received the title of professor.
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Gustaf Einar Du Rietz
1895 - 1967 (72 years)
Gustaf Einar Du Rietz was a Swedish lichenologist and ecologist. He was part of a Swedish Australasian Botanical Expedition to New Zealand in 1926 to study lichens in New Zealand along with his wife Greta Sernander-Du Rietz, who was also a lichenologist. He later became professor of plant ecology at the University of Uppsala in 1934.
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Otto Kröber
1882 - 1969 (87 years)
Otto Kröber was a German entomologist specialising in Diptera. He worked mainly on Tabanidae, Omphralidae, Therevidae and Conopidae. Kröber was a professor in the Zoological Museum in Hamburg . Works SelectedTherevidae.Genera.Ins. .
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Christian Gottlieb Ludwig
1709 - 1773 (64 years)
Christian Gottlieb Ludwig was a German physician and botanist born in Brieg, Silesia . He was the father of physician/naturalist Christian Friedrich Ludwig and of Christian L. Ludwig , a physician/scientist known for his translation of Joseph Priestley's scientific experiments.
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René Maire
1878 - 1949 (71 years)
René Charles Joseph Ernest Maire was a French botanist and mycologist. His major work was the Flore de l'Afrique du Nord in 16 volumes published posthumously in 1953. He collected plants from Algeria, Morocco, France, and Mali for the herbarium of the National Botanic Garden of Belgium.
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Théophile Rudolphe Studer
1845 - 1922 (77 years)
Théophile Rudolphe Studer or Theophil Studer was a Swiss ornithologist and marine biologist. He worked on the collections made on the voyage of the SMS Gazelle and produced a catalogue of the birds of the Switzerland. Another major work was on the study of dog skeletons associated with prehistoric human settlements. He worked as a professor of zoology at the University of Bern from 1873.
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E. F. Warburg
1908 - 1966 (58 years)
Edmund Frederic "Heff" Warburg was an English botanist, known as the co-author of two important British floras. Early life and education Warburg was born in London on 22 March 1908, son of Sir Oscar Emanuel Warburg, businessman and later chairman of the London County Council, and his wife, Catherine née Byrne. His father was a member of the distinguished German–Jewish Warburg family that included botanist Otto Warburg and Otto Heinrich Warburg the Nobel Prize–winning physiologist.
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Tom Tutin
1908 - 1987 (79 years)
Thomas Gaskell Tutin, FRS was Professor of Botany at the University of Leicester and co-author of Flora of the British Isles and Flora Europaea. Earlier life Tutin was born on 21 April 1908 in Kew, Surrey, son of Frank Tutin, a biochemist at the Lister Institute, and his wife, Jane Ardern. He was educated at Cotham Grammar School, Bristol, then won a scholarship to Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied Biological Sciences. In 1929, while still an undergraduate, he went on a botanical expedition to Madeira and the Azores, afterwards publishing two papers on the results of his studies th...
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Thore Christian Elias Fries
1886 - 1930 (44 years)
Thore Christian Elias Fries was Professor of Systematic Botany at Lund University. He specialized in lichenology and plant geography. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation T.C.E.Fr. when citing a botanical name. He did his field work and travelled in India and Africa
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Ferdinand Albin Pax
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Ferdinand Albin Pax was a German botanist specializing in spermatophytes. A collaborator of Adolf Engler, he wrote several monographs and described several species of plants and animals from Silesia and the Carpathians. He was a professor at Wrocław University from 1893. His son Ferdinand Albert Pax was a noted zoologist.
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Johan Reinhardt
1776 - 1845 (69 years)
Johannes Christopher Hagemann Reinhardt , sometimes called J. C. H. Reinhardt, was a professor in zoology at the University of Copenhagen. Born in Rendalen parish in Norway, his father, Johannes Henrik Reinhardt, was a priest, and his mother, Johanne Elisabeth Mommesen, was from Holmestrand . He was not baptized Johannes, but adopted the name later. After having been educated at home, he came to Copenhagen in 1792 and entered the university in 1793, where he passed the first two examinations, but after that spent almost two years at home, where he used the opportunity to study plants and animals.
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Henry Alleyne Nicholson
1844 - 1899 (55 years)
Henry Alleyne Nicholson FRS FRSE FGS FLS was a British palaeontologist and zoologist. Life The son of John Nicholson , a biblical scholar, and his wife Annie Elizabeth Waring, he was born at Penrith, Cumberland on 11 September 1844. His younger sister was the writer Annie Elizabeth Nicholson Ireland, and one of his brothers was John Henry Nicholson, author and poet. He was educated at Appleby Grammar School and then studied Sciences at the universities of Göttingen and Edinburgh . Geology had early attracted his attention, and his first publication was a thesis for his D.Sc. degree titled On...
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Ernst Stromer
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach was a German paleontologist. He is best remembered for his expedition to Egypt, during which the first known remains of Spinosaurus were discovered. He described the following Cretaceous dinosaurs from Egypt: Aegyptosaurus, Bahariasaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and the enigmatic theropod, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. Stromer also described the giant crocodilian, Stomatosuchus.
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Daniel Oliver
1830 - 1916 (86 years)
Daniel Oliver, FRS was an English botanist. He was Librarian of the Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1860–1890 and Keeper there from 1864–1890, and Professor of Botany at University College, London from 1861–1888.
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Peter Ludvig Panum
1820 - 1885 (65 years)
Peter Ludvig Panum was a Danish physiologist and pathologist born on the island of Bornholm in Rønne. The Panum Institute in Copenhagen is named in his honor. Early life and education Panum was born in Rønne on the island of Bornholm, the son of regiment surgeon Jens Severin Nathanael Panum and Johanne Caroline Louise Charlotte Lande . The family moved to Eckernförde in 1829, where his father had assumed a position as regiment surgeon. After matriculating from Flensburg Learned School in 1840, Panum enrolled first at Kiel University before in 1841 transferring to the University of Copenhagen...
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Gustave Roussy
1874 - 1948 (74 years)
Gustave Roussy was a Swiss-French neuropathologist born in Vevey, Switzerland. Career As a hospital interne in Paris, Roussy worked under neurologists Pierre Marie and Joseph Jules Dejerine. In 1907 he earned his doctorate from the University of Paris, and in 1925 was appointed professor of pathological anatomy at the Faculté de Médecine. Later on, he was named dean and rector to the faculty of medicine at the university.
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Jules Émile Planchon
1823 - 1888 (65 years)
Jules Émile Planchon was a French botanist born in Ganges, Hérault. Biography After receiving his Doctorate of Science at the University of Montpellier in 1844, he worked for a while at the Royal Botanical Gardens in London, and for a few years was a teacher in Nancy and Ghent. In 1853 he became head of the department of botanical sciences at the University of Montpellier, where he remained for the remainder of his career.
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Henry Herbert Donaldson
1857 - 1938 (81 years)
Henry Herbert Donaldson was an American pioneer of neurology. One of his most influential studies was on the effect of sensory deprivation, based on the study of Laura Bridgman's brain, on the development of the brain which resulted in the landmark work The Growth of the Brain . He served as a professor of neurology at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology at the University of Pennsylvania and was a major influence on a generation of American neurologists and was a key promoter of the use of the rat as a laboratory research model.
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Thomas Graham Brown
1882 - 1965 (83 years)
Thomas Graham Brown FRS was a Scottish mountaineer and physiologist, most famous for finding three new routes up the east face of Mont Blanc. Life and academic work Graham Brown was born in Edinburgh on 27 March 1882. His father, Dr John Joseph Graham Brown was a President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1912 to 1914. His mother was Jane Pasley Hay Thorburn. The family lived at 63 Castle Street in Edinburgh's New Town.
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Philipp Friedrich Gmelin
1721 - 1768 (47 years)
Philipp Friedrich Gmelin was a professor of botany and chemistry. He studied the chemistry of antimony and wrote texts on the pancreatic ducts, mineral waters, and botany. He was a brother of the famous traveler Johann Georg Gmelin. He obtained his Master's degree in 1742, at the University of Tübingen under Burchard Mauchart.
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Gen-ichi Koidzumi
1883 - 1953 (70 years)
was a Japanese botanist, author of several papers and monographs on phytogeography including work on roses and Amygdaloideae , maples , mulberries , and many other plants. His name is sometimes transliterated as Gen’ichi or Gen-Iti, or as Koizumi.
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Wilhelmine Key
1872 - 1955 (83 years)
Wilhelmine "Minnie" Marie Enteman Key was an American geneticist. She was the first woman to gain a PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago, where she studied coloration in paper wasps. She contributed to the study of eugenics and was an influential teacher to Sewall Wright.
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