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,
#17951
Christian Ludwig Nitzsch
1782 - 1837 (55 years)
Christian Ludwig Nitzsch was a German zoologist. He is best remembered for his approach to classifying birds on the basis of their feather tract distributions or pterylosis of their young. Career He was professor of zoology at the University of Halle. While his primary interest lay in ornithology, Nitzsch published studies on other topics, including diatoms . He is also widely credited with producing the first systematic zoological studies of lice, Nitzsch Ch. L., Darstellung der Familien und Gattungen der Thierinsecten . Magazin fur die Entomologie, Germar, Zincken, Bd.3 . Zoology owes impor...
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Lo Tsung-lo
1898 - 1978 (80 years)
Lo Tsung-lo was a Chinese botanist and plant physiologist. Lo was a main founder of modern plant physiology in China. He was the first President of National Taiwan University . Biography Lo was born in Huangyan, Zhejiang, Qing China on 2 August 1898. His father was a merchant. Lo entered Hangzhou Anding Middle School in 1911. In 1912, Lo transferred to Shanghai Nanyang Middle School and graduated in 1917. In 1930, Lo obtained a PhD from Hokkaido University in Japan.
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James Peter Hill
1873 - 1954 (81 years)
James Peter Hill FRS was a Scottish embryologist. Education Hill was born in Kennoway, Scotland on 21 February. He attended the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and graduated with a Doctor of Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1903.
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Ignaz Friedrich Tausch
1793 - 1848 (55 years)
Ignaz Friedrich Tausch was a Bohemian botanist. He studied philosophy, medicine and natural sciences at the University of Prague, becoming an associate professor of economic and technical botany in 1815. He discovered at least eleven species of plants, including Rhizobotrya alpina and Saxifraga hostii. During his career he worked at the botanical garden of Emanuel Joseph Malabaila von Canal .
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Carl Borivoj Presl
1794 - 1852 (58 years)
Carl Borivoj Presl was a Czech botanist. Biography Presl lived his entire life in Prague, and was a professor of botany at the University of Prague . He made an expedition to Sicily in 1817, and with his brother, published a "Flora bohemica" titled "Flora čechica: indicatis medicinalibus, oeconomicis technologicisque plantis" in 1819.
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Gaetano Savi
1769 - 1844 (75 years)
Gaetano Savi was an Italian naturalist., botanist and mycologist. He was born in Florence and studied with Giorgio Santi and Adolfo Targioni Tozzetti . In 1798 he published Flora Pisana ; in 1801 the first edition of Trattato degli alberi della Toscana ; in 1808 Botanicon Etruscum ; and in 1818 Flora Italiana . He taught physics and botany at the University of Pisa and directed the botanical garden there from 1814. In 1816, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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Frederick A. Askew Skuse
1863 - 1896 (33 years)
Frederick Arthur Askew Skuse was a British-Australian entomologist. Biography Frederick Arthur Askew Skuse, son of Thomas Edmund and Jane Skuse, was christened on 17 June 1866 at Saint Mary's, Portsea, Portsmouth, England.
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Thomas Coulter
1793 - 1843 (50 years)
Thomas Coulter , of Dundalk, was an Irish physician, botanist and explorer. He was a member of the Royal Irish Academy, a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and founder of that college's herbarium. After completing a medical degree in Dublin, Coulter studied botany in Geneva for 17 months under Swiss taxonomist Augustin de Candolle. He then left Switzerland and became a physician with the Real del Monte Company in Mexico. During this period he collected and catalogued plants in the region. He eventually left Mexico and travelled the world exploring many countries and conducting botanical research culminating in Arizona and Alta California in the early 19th century.
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Boris Fedtschenko
1872 - 1947 (75 years)
Boris Alexeevich Fedtschenko was a Russian plant pathologist and botanist. He is primarily known for his work on various regions of Russia, especially the Caucasus, Siberia and Asiatic Russia. He was also head botanist at the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden.
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Alfred Hoche
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
Alfred Erich Hoche was a German psychiatrist known for his writings about eugenics and euthanasia. Life Hoche studied in Berlin and Heidelberg and became a psychiatrist in 1890. He moved to Strasbourg in 1891. From 1902 he was a professor in Freiburg im Breisgau and was the director of the psychiatric clinic there. He was a major opponent of the psychoanalysis theories of Sigmund Freud. Hoche's body of work on the classification system of mental illness had great influence. He also published poetry under the pseudonym Alfred Erich.
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Charles Joseph Gahan
1862 - 1939 (77 years)
Charles Joseph Gahan was an Irish entomologist who specialized in beetles, particularly the Cerambycidae. He served as keeper at the department of entomology in the British Museum for thirteen years after Charles Owen Waterhouse.
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Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum
1828 - 1899 (71 years)
Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum was a German psychiatrist. Life and career In 1855 he received his medical doctorate at Berlin, and subsequently worked as a physician at the mental asylum in Wehlau. For a period he was also a lecturer at the University of Königsberg , and from 1867 was director of the mental hospital at Görlitz. He would remain at Görlitz for the remainder of his life.
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Richard L. Heschl
1824 - 1881 (57 years)
Richard Ladislaus Heschl was an Austrian anatomist. Biography Heschl was born on 5 July 1824 in Welsdorf . In 1849 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna, where in 1850 he became a "first assistant" to Carl von Rokitansky . In 1854 he was appointed professor of anatomy at the medical-surgical school in Olomouc, and during the following year became a professor of pathological anatomy in Kraków. In 1861 he became a professor at the medical-surgical school at Graz , serving as university rector in 1864–65. In 1875, he returned to the University of Vienna. After his death...
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Roland Thaxter
1858 - 1932 (74 years)
Roland Thaxter was an American mycologist, plant pathologist, botanist, and entomologist, renowned for his contribution to the insect parasitic fungi—Laboulbeniales. His college education was completed at Harvard, where he dedicated forty years to mycological and botanical research. His five-volume series on fungi in the order Laboulbeniales laid a solid foundation of research on these insect ectoparasites. He also contributed to the field of Plant Pathology.
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Adolfo Targioni Tozzetti
1823 - 1902 (79 years)
Adolfo Targioni Tozzetti was an Italian entomologist who specialised in Sternorrhyncha. He was Professor of Botany and Zoology in Florence, associated with Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze where his collection remains today at La Specola. He was especially interested in pest species, mainly mealybugs, scale insects and other pests that attack citrus and peaches. He described many new taxa.
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Conrad Elvehjem
1901 - 1962 (61 years)
Conrad Arnold Elvehjem was internationally known as an American biochemist in nutrition. In 1937 he identified two vitamins, nicotinic acid, also known as niacin, and nicotinamide, which were deficient directly in human pellagra, once a major health problem in the United States. Collectively, nicotinic acid and nicotinamide are termed vitamin B3 and are now understood to be precursors of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide.
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Hartog Jacob Hamburger
1859 - 1924 (65 years)
Hartog Jakob or Hartog Jacob Hamburger was a Dutch physiologist, born in Alkmaar. After completing the Hogere Burgerschool in Alkmaar, Hamburger studied chemistry at Utrecht University, where he received his doctorate in 1883, on the determination of urea in urine. He subsequently worked with Utrecht ophthalmologist and physiologist Franciscus Cornelis Donders for seven years, and completed a medical degree.
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Joseph Villeneuve de Janti
1868 - 1944 (76 years)
Joseph Théodore Villeneuve de Janti Was a French entomologist. He specialised in Diptera. He worked in Paris at the Pasteur Institute and at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. As well as naming many new taxa Villeneuve made significant contributions to medical entomology. He was a Member of the Société Entomologique de France.
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Gottlieb Wilhelm Bischoff
1797 - 1854 (57 years)
Gottlieb Wilhelm Bischoff was a German botanist and university professor. He was among the first to examine the reproduction of mosses and liverworts and is credited with coining the terms archegonia and antheridia.
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Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmermann
1743 - 1815 (72 years)
Eberhardt August Wilhelm von Zimmermann was a German geographer and zoologist. He studied natural philosophy and mathematics in Leiden, Halle, Berlin, and Göttingen, and in 1766 was appointed professor of mathematics and natural sciences at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig. One of his pupils was mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. From 1789 onward, he served as aulic councillor in Braunschweig.
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Maria Pavlova
1854 - 1938 (84 years)
Maria Vasilievna Pavlova was a Ukrainian who became a paleontologist and academician in Moscow during the Russian Empire and Soviet era. She is known for her research on the fossils of and the naming of hoofed-mammals of the Tertiary period. She was a professor at Moscow State University. She also made great efforts to establish the Museum of Paleontology at the university. In 1926, the museum was named after her and her second husband, Alexei Petrovich Pavlov, a geologist, paleontologist, and academician who made a significant contribution in the field of stratigraphy.
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Augustus Volney Waller
1816 - 1870 (54 years)
Augustus Volney Waller FRS was a British neurophysiologist. He was the first to describe the degeneration of severed nerve fibers, now known as Wallerian degeneration. Life The son of William Waller of Elverton Farm, near Faversham, Kent, was born on 21 December 1816. His youth was spent at Nice, where his father died in 1830. Waller was then sent back to England, where he lived, first with Dr. Lacon Lambe of Tewkesbury, and afterwards with William Lambe the vegetarian. His father sharing Lambe's views, Augustus was brought up until the age of eighteen on a vegetarian diet.
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Franz Meyen
1804 - 1840 (36 years)
Franz Julius Ferdinand Meyen was a Prussian physician and botanist. Meyen was born in Tilsit, East Prussia. In 1830 he wrote Phytotomie, the first major study of plant anatomy. Between 1830 and 1832, he took part in an expedition to South America on board the Prinzess Luise, visiting Peru and Bolivia, describing species then new to science such as the Humboldt penguin.
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William S. Clark
1826 - 1886 (60 years)
William Smith Clark was an American professor of chemistry, botany, and zoology; a colonel during the American Civil War; and a leader in agricultural education. Raised and schooled in Easthampton, Massachusetts, Clark spent most of his adult life in Amherst, Massachusetts. He graduated from Amherst College in 1848 and obtained a doctorate in chemistry from Georgia Augusta University in Göttingen in 1852. He then served as professor of chemistry at Amherst College from 1852 to 1867. During the Civil War, he was granted leave from Amherst to serve with the 21st Regiment Massachusetts Volunt...
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Georg Hans Emmo Wolfgang Hieronymus
1846 - 1921 (75 years)
Georg Hans Emmo Wolfgang Hieronymus was a European botanist of German extraction. He was born in Silesia and died in Berlin. He began his career as a medical student in Zürich and Bern from 1868 to 1870, but became interested in botany, instead. He then studied at the University of Halle, where he earned his doctorate in 1872.
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Karl Fritsch
1864 - 1934 (70 years)
Karl Fritsch was an Austrian botanist. He was born in Vienna and educated mainly at the University of Vienna, obtaining his PhD degree in 1886 and his Habilitation in 1890. In 1900 he moved to the University of Graz as professor of Systematic Botany, where he built up the botanical institute. In 1910 he was appointed as director of the university's botanical garden, and in 1916 the new institute acquired its own building. He continued at Graz for the rest of his career, and died there.
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Józef Paczoski
1864 - 1942 (78 years)
Józef Konrad Paczoski was an eminent Polish botanist, Professor at the Poznań University and a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Learning. He coined the term "phytosociology" and was one of the founders of this branch of botany. He is also known for his research on the flora of the Białowieża Forest.
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Francis Guthrie
1831 - 1899 (68 years)
Francis Guthrie was a South African mathematician and botanist who first posed the Four Colour Problem in 1852. He studied mathematics under Augustus De Morgan, and botany under John Lindley at University College London. Guthrie obtained his B.A. in 1850, and LL.B. in 1852 with first class honours. While colouring a map of the counties of England, he noticed that at least four colours were required so that no two regions sharing a common border were the same colour. He postulated that four colours would be sufficient to colour any map. This became known as the Four Color Problem, and remaine...
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Augustus Radcliffe Grote
1841 - 1903 (62 years)
Augustus Radcliffe Grote was a British entomologist who described over 1,000 species of butterflies and moths. He is best known for his work on North American Noctuidae. A number of species were named after him, including the moth Horama grotei.
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Margaret Jane Benson
1859 - 1936 (77 years)
Margaret Jane Benson was an English botanist specialising in paleobotany, and one of the first female members of the Linnean Society of London. Most of her career was spent as the head of the Department of Botany at Royal Holloway College, University of London from 1893 to 1922. In 1927, a botanical laboratory was dedicated in her name. She travelled extensively with Ethel Sargant, collecting specimens, laboratory equipment, and meeting other botanists around the world. Her students included Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan, Theodora Lisle Prankerd, Nesta Ferguson, and Emily Mary Berridge.
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Francis Maitland Balfour
1851 - 1882 (31 years)
Francis Maitland Balfour, known as F. M. Balfour, FRS was a British biologist. He lost his life while attempting the ascent of Mont Blanc. He was regarded by his colleagues as one of the greatest biologists of his day and Charles Darwin's successor.
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Robert Graham
1786 - 1845 (59 years)
Robert Graham was a Scottish physician and botanist. Life Graham was born in Stirling the son of Dr Robert Graham, physician. After studying at Stirling Grammar School he continued first to the University of Glasgow and then to the University of Edinburgh where he graduated around 1806, and completed his MD in 1808. He trained further at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, where he qualified as a surgeon. He then returned to Scotland to practice at Glasgow Royal Infirmary 1812-3 and 1816–19.
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Georg Erhard Hamberger
1697 - 1755 (58 years)
Georg Erhard Hamberger was a German professor of medicine, surgery, and botany. Biography Hamberger was born in Jena, and received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Jena in 1721. He studied the physiology of respiration, especially with respect to breathing. He authored a textbook on physiology, covering the thorax muscles, intercostal muscles, and pleural sac. He also studied the reaction of camphor and nitric acid. His writings included the study of gravitation and the ascension of gases.
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Ethel Sargant
1863 - 1918 (55 years)
Ethel Sargant was a British botanist who studied both the cytology and morphology of plants. She was one of the first female members of the Linnean Society and the first woman to serve on their council. She was the first woman to preside over a Section of the British Association. At Cambridge, she was elected an Honorary Fellow of Girton College in 1913 and also became President of the British Federation of University Women from 1913 until 1918.
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Richard P. Mayeux
#17986
William Aitcheson Haswell
1854 - 1925 (71 years)
William Aitcheson Haswell was a Scottish-Australian zoologist specialising in crustaceans, winner of the 1915 Clarke Medal. His zoological author abbreviation is Haswell. Taxa authored by him are given in :Category:Taxa named by William Aitcheson Haswell and by this query.
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Sten Selander
1891 - 1957 (66 years)
Sten Selander was a Swedish writer and scientist. He made his literary debut in 1916, and was awarded the Dobloug Prize in 1952. He was a lecturer in plant biology in Uppsala, and was a member of the Swedish Academy.
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Burt Green Wilder
1841 - 1925 (84 years)
Burt Green Wilder was an American comparative anatomist. Biography Burton Green Wilder was born in Boston to David and Celia Colton Wilder. He graduated at Harvard . During part of the Civil War he served as surgeon of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Infantry. From 1867 to his retirement in 1910 he was professor of neurology and vertebrate zoölogy at Cornell.
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Georg Friedrich Kaulfuss
1786 - 1830 (44 years)
Georg Friedrich Kaulfuss was a professor at Halle. He described the pteridophytes collected by Adelbert von Chamisso, and he named the fern Cibotium chamissoi after him. The genus Kaulfussia is named for Kaulfuss.
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Francis Gotch
1853 - 1913 (60 years)
Francis Gotch was a British neurophysiologist who was professor of physiology at University College Liverpool and Oxford University. He was educated at Amersham Hall School and then at London University graduating B.A. in 1873 and then B.Sc. After studying medicine he qualified M.R.C.S. in 1881.
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Hans Schinz
1858 - 1941 (83 years)
Hans Schinz was a Swiss explorer and botanist who was a native of Zürich. In 1884 he participated in an exploratory expedition to German Southwest Africa that was organized by German merchant Adolf Lüderitz . For the next few years Schinz undertook extensive scientific studies of the northern parts of the colony. As a result of the expedition, he published Deutsch-Südwestafrika, Forschungsreisen durch die deutschen Schutzgebiete Groß- Nama- und Hereroland, nach dem Kunene, dem Ngamisee und Kalahari 1884-1887 . This work was an important scientific, geographic and ethnographic study of the colony, and was one of the first comprehensive works on the Ovamboland region.
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Peter Boysen Jensen
1883 - 1959 (76 years)
Peter Boysen Jensen was a Danish plant physiologist. His research was fundamental to further work on the auxin theory of tropisms. Early life and education Peter was born in Hjerting, near Esbjerg in southern Jutland. Being raised on a farm, he discovered early his affinity to nature. He studied botany during his first premed year, and decided to focus on plant physiology after being influenced by ecologist Eugenius Warming. and Wilhelm Johannsen were Boysen Jensen's plant physiology teachers and advisors. While he was a college student in Copenhagen however, neither of these was actively involved in experimental plant physiology.
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Josef Engel
1816 - 1899 (83 years)
Josef Engel was an anatomist from Austria-Hungary. He was appointed professor of anatomy at Zürich in 1844 and later he became professor of physiology also. Five years afterward, he was appointed professor of pathological anatomy at the University of Prague. In 1854 he became professor of anatomy at the Josephsakademie , Vienna, in which position he remained until 1874. He made many important contributions to the systematization of anatomical science and its study.
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Eusebio Oehl
1827 - 1903 (76 years)
Eusebio Oehl was an Italian histologist and physiologist who was a native of Lodi. Biography Oehl studied medicine at the University of Pavia, and following graduation , he continued his education in Vienna under Joseph Hyrtl and Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke . Afterwards, he returned to Pavia, where he taught classes in histology at the Collegio Ghislieri and at the university. In 1864 he attained the chair of physiology at the institute of physiology in Pavia.
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Ernest Overton
1865 - 1933 (68 years)
Charles Ernest Overton was a British and Swedish physiologist and biologist, now regarded as a pioneer of the theory of the cell membrane. In the last years of the 19th century Overton did experimental work, allowing the distinction to be drawn between the cell wall of plants and their cytoplasmic membrane. He studied the permeability of a range of biological materials to around 500 chemical compounds. In 1900, Overton proposed a biomembrane model "Overton Biomembrane Model" which stated that biomembranes are made up of lipids. He gave this statement on the basis of observation of transport o...
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Luuk Tinbergen
1915 - 1955 (40 years)
Luuk Tinbergen was a Dutch ornithologist and ecologist. Tinbergen was the youngest of three eminent brothers — both Jan and Nikolaas won Nobel Prizes, for economics and physiology or medicine, respectively.
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Arend Friedrich August Wiegmann
1802 - 1841 (39 years)
Arend Friedrich August Wiegmann was a German zoologist and herpetologist born in Braunschweig. He studied medicine and philology at the University of Leipzig, and afterwards was an assistant to Martin Lichtenstein in Berlin. In 1828 he became a professor at Cologne, and two years later was an extraordinary professor at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin.
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Ernst Albert Gäumann
1893 - 1963 (70 years)
Ernst Albert Gäumann was a Swiss botanist and mycologist. Born in Lyss, Canton of Bern, he obtained his early education in Biel, where he experienced both German and French languages and cultures. Studying with Eduard Fischer at the University of Bern, Gäumann received his PhD in 1917 for his research on Peronospora, a genus of water molds. After travels and study in Sweden, the United States, and the East Indies, Gäumann worked as a plant pathologist in Buitenzorg, Java, from 1919 to 1922, and then as a botanist in Zurich for several years. He held a position at the Swiss Federal Institute o...
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Christian August Voigt
1808 - 1890 (82 years)
Christian August Voigt was an Austrian anatomist born in Brody, Galicia. He studied medicine in Vienna, receiving his doctorate in 1841 with a dissertation titled, De systemate Intermedio vasorum eiusque radicibus. In Vienna, he was influenced by the work of anatomist Christian Joseph Berres . From 1847 to 1850, he was a professor at the surgical-medical college in Laibach, afterwards teaching classes in Lemberg , Krakow and Vienna , where he was a professor of anatomy and histology. Voigt was a member of the Vienna Academy of Sciences.
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Aoyama Tanemichi
1859 - 1917 (58 years)
Aoyama Tanemichi was a medical scientist and doctor specializing in internal medicine. He became a member of the Imperial Japan Academy in 1906, received the first class medal, "Order of the Sacred Treasure", in 1916, and was given the title of Danshaku in 1917.
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