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,
#18151
Elizabeth C. Miller
1920 - 1987 (67 years)
Elizabeth Cavert Miller was an American biochemist, known for fundamental research into the chemical mechanism of cancer carcinogenesis, working closely with her husband James A. Miller. Biography Miller was the daughter of an economist at the Federal Land Bank in Minneapolis. She studied biochemistry at the University of Minnesota . In 1945 she received her doctorate under Carl Baumann as a Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Scholar. As a postgraduate, she worked at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she and her husband James A. Miller studied chemical carcinogenesis.
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Louis Hermann Pammel
1862 - 1931 (69 years)
Louis Hermann Pammel was an American botanist, conservationist, and professor of botany. Biography Louis Hermann Pammel was the second of six children and the oldest son of his parents who were Prussian immigrants to Wisconsin. In 1885 he graduated with a bachelor's degree in agriculture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where William Trelease taught him in courses in ecology, cryptogamic botany, and botanical taxonomy. In July 1885 he became employed in a Chicago seed company. In October 1885 he became a medical student at Philadelphia's Hahnemann Medical College. However, he soon accepted an offer to work as an assistant to the botanist William G.
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Bernhard Walthard
1897 - 1992 (95 years)
Bernhard Walthard was a Swiss pathologist and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bern. In 1922 he earned his doctorate at the University of Zurich with a thesis on liver function tests during pregnancy sub partu, in childbirth and in eclampsia. In 1932, he became lecturer at the University of Bern, in 1940 associate professor, and in 1946 full professor. He was also director of the Institute of Pathology of the same university.
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Elzada Clover
1897 - 1980 (83 years)
Elzada Clover was an American botanist who was the first to catalog plant life in the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. She and Lois Jotter became the first two women to raft the entire length of the Grand Canyon.
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Gert Bonnier
1890 - 1961 (71 years)
Gert Bonnier was a Swedish geneticist and Drosophila researcher. He was a professor in the zoology department at Stockholm College. Family life A member of the Bonnier family, Bonnier was the third of four sons of Karl Otto Bonnier, a publisher who served as leader of the Albert Bonniers förlag publishing house. Unlike his three brothers, Gert did not work at his father's publishing house.
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Richard Kräusel
1890 - 1966 (76 years)
Richard Oswald Karl Kräusel was a German paleobotanist. He studied botany at the University of Breslau as a pupil of Ferdinand Albin Pax, and in 1913 received his doctorate with the thesis Beiträge zur kenntnis der Holzer aus der schlesischen Braunkohle . From 1920 to 1952 he worked as a lecturer and professor at the University of Frankfurt. He was also associated with the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, where he served as head of the department of paleobotany. During World War II his collections of fossil plants were stored in a nearby castle for safekeeping; unfortunately t...
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Félicien Chapuis
1824 - 1879 (55 years)
Félicien Chapuis was a Belgian doctor and entomologist. He specialised in Coleoptera and finished the text of Genera des coléoptères by Théodore Lacordaire when Lacordaire died. He wrote:1865 des platypides. H. Dessain, Liège.1874. Histoire Naturelle des Insectes. Genera des Coléoptères. Tome 10. Libraire Encyclopédique de Roret, Paris, 455 pp., pls. 111–124. 1875. Naturelle des Insectes. Genera des ColéoptèresTome 11. Libraire Encyclopédique de Roret, Paris, 420 pp., pls. 125–130. 1876. Histoire Naturelle des Insectes. Genera des Coléoptères. Tome 12. Libraire Encyclopédique de Roret, Paris, 424 pp., pls.
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Hans Kuypers
1925 - 1989 (64 years)
Henricus Gerardus Jacobus Maria Kuypers , usually more simply known as Hans Kuypers, was a Dutch neuroscientist. He was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, studied medicine at Leiden University and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1952 by Zurich University for his work on neuroanatomy.
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Nikolay Stoyanov
1883 - 1968 (85 years)
Nikolai Andreev Stojanov was an academic and botanist who was among the founders of botany in Bulgaria. He was for many years professor at Sofia University, the founder and first director of the Institute of Botany of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences .
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Vladimir Arnoldi
1871 - 1924 (53 years)
Vladimir Mitrofanovich Arnoldi was a Russian professor of biology. He was a Corresponding Member of Russian Academy of Sciences and scientifically listed a number of valuable plants in Malaysia. He lived in the Russian city of Tambov for much of his life. His son Konstantin Arnoldi became a prominent entomologist.
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Winifred Goldring
1888 - 1971 (83 years)
Winifred Goldring , was an American paleontologist whose work included a description of stromatolites, as well as the study of Devonian crinoids. She was the first woman in the nation to be appointed as a State Paleontologist.
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Agnes Claypole Moody
1870 - 1954 (84 years)
Agnes Mary Claypole Moody was an American zoologist and professor of natural science. Early life and education Agnes Mary Claypole Moody was born in Bristol, England to Jane and Edward Waller Claypole. She had a twin sister, Edith Jane Claypole , who was also a biologist. She attended Buchtel College, and in 1894 she attended Cornell University for her master's degree. She completed doctoral work at the University of Chicago in 1896.
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Thomas Lauth
1758 - 1826 (68 years)
Thomas Lauth was a French anatomist. He was the father of anatomist Ernest Alexandre Lauth . Background He studied philosophy, mathematics, science and medicine at the University of Strasbourg, receiving his doctorate in 1781. After graduation, he continued his medical studies in Paris with Pierre-Joseph Desault , and in London with John Hunter . Following his return to Strasbourg he worked as an obstetrical adjunct. In 1785 he was appointed a full professor of anatomy and surgery in Strasbourg. In 1794, with the creation of the Ecole de Santé, his post became the chair of anatomy and physiol...
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Wilhelm Krause
1833 - 1910 (77 years)
Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Krause was a German anatomist born in Hanover. He was the son of anatomist Karl Friedrich Theodor Krause . Krause studied at Göttingen, where he became member of Burschenschaft Hannovera . In 1854 he earned his medical doctorate, and later became an associate professor at the University of Göttingen. In 1892 he was appointed head of the Anatomical Institute Laboratory in Berlin.
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Per Erland Berg Wendelbo
1927 - 1981 (54 years)
Per Erland Berg Wendelbo was a Norwegian botanist. He was born in Oslo, a son of physician Per Kristian Lund Wendelbo and textile designer Sigrun Berg, and grandson of judge and politician Paal Berg. He was appointed professor of botany at the University of Gothenburg from 1965 to 1981, and was a specialist on Southwestern Asian flora. Among his publications are The Ariamehr Botanical Garden Handbook from 1974 and Tulips and Irises of Iran and their relatives from 1977.
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Franz Xaver Heller
1778 - 1840 (62 years)
Franz Xaver Heller was a German physician and botanist. He studied medicine at the University of Würzburg, graduating in 1800 with doctorates in medicine and surgery. In 1803 he became an associate professor at Würzburg, and two years later was appointed a full professor of botany. In 1828 he was named rector of the university. During the same year, he became a corresponding member of the Medico-Botanical Society of London.
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Aven Nelson
1859 - 1951 (92 years)
Aven Nelson was an American botanist who specialized in plants of the Rocky Mountains. He was one of the founding professors of the University of Wyoming, where he taught for 55 years as professor and served as president . He served as president of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists and Botanical Society of America.
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Georg Kükenthal
1864 - 1955 (91 years)
Georg Kükenthal was a German pastor and botanist who specialized in the field of caricology. He was the brother of zoologist Willy Kükenthal . From 1882 to 1885 he studied theology at the universities of Tübingen and Halle. He worked as a pastor in Grub am Forst, and later in Coburg. In 1913 he received an honorary degree from the University of Breslau.
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Bernard Beryl Brodie
1907 - 1989 (82 years)
Bernard Beryl Brodie was a founding scientist in the area of biochemical and neurochemical pharmacology whose work in the 1940s and 1950s had great impact. He was a major figure in the fields of drug metabolism and drug therapy, studying how the absorption and interactions of drugs in the body. Brodie helped to found and lead the Laboratory of Chemical Pharmacology at the National Heart Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, one of the National Institutes of Health. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
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Leopold Hartley Grindon
1818 - 1904 (86 years)
Leopold Hartley Grindon was an English educator and botanist, and a pioneer in adult education. His plant collection and botanical drawings and writings formed a major asset of the herbarium at Manchester Museum, when it was founded in 1860.
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Wilton Ivie
1907 - 1969 (62 years)
Vaine Wilton Ivie was an American arachnologist, who described hundreds of new species and many new genera of spiders, both under his own name and in collaboration with Ralph Vary Chamberlin. He was employed by the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He also was a supporter of the Technocracy movement.
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Effie A. Southworth
1860 - 1947 (87 years)
Effie Almira Southworth Spalding , was an American botanist and mycologist, and the first woman plant pathologist hired by the United States Department of Agriculture . Her most important discovery was the 1887 identification of the fungus Colletotrichum gossypii as the cause of cotton cankers, a disease which killed thousands of acres of cotton and was a major economic threat. She taught botany at several institutions, worked at the Desert Botanical Laboratory with her husband, and established the Botany Department Herbarium at the University of Southern California.
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Isaac Ginsburg
1886 - 1975 (89 years)
Isaac Ginsburg was a Lithuanian-born American ichthyologist. Biography Early life Ginsburg was born in Lithuania in 1886. He immigrated to the United States during his childhood. He attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he studied ichthyology.
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William A. Wimsatt
1917 - 1985 (68 years)
William A. Wimsatt was professor of Zoology and Chairman of the Department of Zoology at Cornell University. From 1945 until 1960, Wimsatt taught courses in histology and embryology in the College of Arts and Sciences and also in the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine. He was well known for his pioneering research on the interrelationships of hibernation and reproduction and the biology of bats.
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Philip Eggleton
1903 - 1954 (51 years)
Philip Eggleton FRSE was a British biochemist, physiologist, lecturer, and , co-discoverer of Phosphagens. Life Eggleton was born at Kingston-on-Thames on 19 March 1903. He attended the Tiffin School there before going to the University of London graduating BSc in 1922 and receiving his doctorate in 1930.
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Oscar von Schüppel
1837 - 1881 (44 years)
Oscar von Schüppel was a German pathologist. He studied anatomy at the University of Leipzig, later relocating to Tübingen, where in 1869 he was appointed professor of pathological anatomy. In 1876/77 he served as university rector.
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Anna Vickers
1852 - 1906 (54 years)
Anna Vickers was a marine algologist and plant collector known principally for her work on algae of the Antilles and the Canary Islands. Biography Anna Vickers was born on 28 June 1852 in Bordeaux, France, though it is likely that her father was British. In 1879–80, she visited Australia and New Zealand with her family, traveling widely and becoming interested in the Maori language. In 1883 she published a monograph about these travels, Voyage en Australie et en Novelle-Zélande. Topics she touched on range from word derivations in the Maori language to the ferns and algae of south Australia. ...
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Karl Brandt
1854 - 1931 (77 years)
Andreas Heinrich Karl Brandt was a German zoologist and marine biologist. He studied natural sciences in Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1877 at the University of Halle. Following graduation he served as an assistant to Emil Du Bois-Reymond at the physiological institute of the University of Berlin. From 1882 to 1885 he worked at the zoological station in Naples, and in 1885 obtained his habilitation from the University of Königsberg under the direction of Carl Chun .
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Martin Bernhardt
1844 - 1915 (71 years)
Martin Bernhardt was a German neuropathologist. Bernhardt was a native of Potsdam. His family was Jewish. In 1867 he received his medical doctorate at the University of Berlin, where he was a student of Rudolf Virchow and Ludwig Traube . Subsequently, he became an assistant to Ernst Viktor von Leyden at the university clinic at Königsberg, and afterwards worked at the Berlin-Charité under Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal . After military service in the Franco-Prussian War, he returned to Berlin as a specialist in neuropathology, and in 1882 attained the title of "professor extraordinarius".
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Michael Graham
1898 - 1972 (74 years)
Michael Graham CMG OBE was a British fisheries scientist, author, and ecologist. He was the director of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food fisheries laboratory in Lowestoft , now known as the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science . His classic book, The Fish Gate, published in 1943, paints a picture of the near-collapse of the British fishing industry through overfishing that occurred before both the First and the Second World Wars.
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Paul Charles Dubois
1848 - 1918 (70 years)
Paul Charles Dubois was a Swiss neuropathologist who was a native of La Chaux-de-Fonds. Dubois studied medicine at the University of Bern, and in 1876 was a general practitioner of medicine in Bern. He was interested in psychosomatic medicine, eventually gaining a reputation as a highly regarded psychotherapist. In 1902 he became a professor of neuropathology at Bern. Dubois was influenced by the writings of German psychiatrist Johann Christian August Heinroth .
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Sheina Marshall
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Sheina Macalister Marshall was a Scottish marine biologist who dedicated her life to the study of plant and animal plankton. She was an authority on the copepod Calanus. She worked at the Marine Biological Station at Millport, Cumbrae in Scotland from 1922-1964.
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Nikolaus Ager
1568 - 1634 (66 years)
Nikolaus Ager, name also spelled Nicolas Ager and sometimes referred to as Agerius was a French physician and botanist born in Alsace. He was the author of the treatise "De Anima Vegetativa" . He studied medicine in Basel, subsequently obtaining doctorates in medicine and philosophy in Strasbourg. In 1618 he became a professor of medicine and botany at Strasbourg. During his career, he worked closely with famed botanists Johann and Gaspard Bauhin.
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Maximilien Chaudoir
1816 - 1881 (65 years)
Maximilien Chaudoir, or Maximilien, baron de Chaudoir, was a Russian entomologist. He was a specialist in Coleoptera and in particular the Carabidae. His Cicindelidae are conserved by the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris. His Carabidae were acquired by Charles Oberthür , then given to the same museum. He wrote Mémoire sur la famille des Carabiques, 6 volumes commencing 1848.
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Theodora Lisle Prankerd
1878 - 1939 (61 years)
Theodora Lisle Prankerd was a British botanist who worked on the growth of ferns, and lectured at Bedford College and the University of Reading. Early life and education Theodora Lisle Prankerd was born in Hackney, London, the daughter of general practitioner Orlando Reeves Prankerd and his second wife, Clementina Soares. She attended Brighton High School . She then studied botany Royal Holloway, University of London, first supported by a Founders scholarship, and then a Driver Scholarship, graduating with 1st Class Honours in 1903, at the time headed by Margaret Jane Benson.
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George Herbert Carpenter
1865 - 1939 (74 years)
George Herbert Carpenter was a British naturalist and entomologist, born in the Peckham district of southeast London in 1865, and died in Belfast on 22 January 1939. His main interests were in the study of insects and arachnids, zoogeography, and economic zoology. In addition to numerous contributions to scientific journals and Encyclopædia Britannica, he authored five books.
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Eleanor Albert Bliss
1899 - 1987 (88 years)
Eleanor Albert Bliss was an immunologist who made significant advancements to the field of immunological research. She was also a dean and professor of biology at Bryn Mawr College. Life and education Eleanor Albert Bliss was born on December 16, 1899, in Jamestown, Rhode Island. Her family lived in Baltimore where her father, William J. Bliss was a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Her mother's name was Edith Grantham Bliss who was originally from Pennsylvania. The Bliss family lived in Baltimore for their children's entire childhood.
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Antoine-Athanase Royer-Collard
1768 - 1825 (57 years)
Antoine-Athanase Royer-Collard was a French physician and psychiatrist. He was a younger brother to philosopher Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard . Royer-Collard was born in Sompuis. He studied medicine in Paris, and in 1802 received his doctorate with a dissertation on amenorrhea . In 1806, he was named chief physician at the Charenton mental asylum, and in 1816 became a professor of forensic medicine at the University of Paris. In 1819, he was appointed to the first chair of médecine mentale. Among his better known students were Antoine Laurent Bayle and Louis-Florentin Calmeil.
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Tesha Zohidov
1906 - 1981 (75 years)
Tesha Zohidovich Zohidov was a Soviet-Uzbek zoologist, ecologist, and politician who served as president of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR from 1952 to 1956. Early life and education Zohidov was born on to an impoverished Uzbek family in Kokand. When he was only ten years old he began working at a print shop as an apprentice, although after the Soviet presence in the region increased he began attending a local school. After completing initial schooling in Kokand in 1924 he continued his education at the Tashkent Pedagogical College named after Narimonov, which he graduated from in 1926.
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Gonçalo Sampaio
1865 - 1937 (72 years)
Gonçalo António da Silva Ferreira Sampaio was a Portuguese botanist. He studied mathematics at the University of Coimbra and chemistry, mineralogy and botany at the Polytechnic Academy of Porto. From 1890 he served as an assistant naturalist at the Polytechnic Academy. From 1912 to 1935 he was a professor of botany at the faculty of sciences of the University of Porto. As a taxonomist he described around 50 new species of vascular plants, five new species of desmids and about 70 new taxa of lichens that included the genus Carlosia . The mycological genus Sampaioa commemorates his name.
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John R. Paul
1893 - 1971 (78 years)
John Rodman Paul was an American virologist whose research focused on the spread of polio and the development of treatments for the disease. Life and achievements Paul was born on April 18, 1893, in Philadelphia. He earned his undergraduate degree in 1915 from Princeton University and received his medical training at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, which awarded him an M.D. degree. He began his career as an assistant pathologist at Johns Hopkins in 1919 and 1920, and followed that with an internship at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia from 1920 to 1922. In 1928, Paul joined the facult...
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Maurice Pic
1866 - 1957 (91 years)
Maurice Pic was a French entomologist who specialised in Coleoptera. He contributed to Mary-Louis Fauconnet's Catalogue raisonné des coléoptères de Saône-et-Loire and wrote many short papers, many in L'Échange, Revue Linnéenne describing world beetles. His most important work was for Sigmund Schenkling's still very relevant Coleopterorum Catalogus.
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Bernhard Rawitz
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Bernhard Rawitz was a German military physician, anatomist and zoologist. He studied medicine at Kaiser Wilhlem Akademie in Berlin, afterwards serving as a military doctor in Metz . He later worked at the zoological stations in Naples and Rovigno . In the late 19th century he journeyed to northern Norway , where he performed studies of cetaceans.
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Carl Bovallius
1849 - 1907 (58 years)
Carl Erik Alexander Bovallius was a Swedish biologist and archaeologist. Biography Carl Bovallius was born at Stockholm, Sweden. He was the son of Robert Mauritz Bowallius . His father was a historian and National Archivist 1874–1882.
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Karl Suessenguth
1893 - 1955 (62 years)
Karl Suessenguth was a German botanist. He studied under Karl Ritter von Goebel at the University of Munich, where in 1927 he became a professor of botany. From 1927 to 1955 he was curator of the Botanische Staatssammlung München.
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Bernhard Peyer
1885 - 1963 (78 years)
Bernhard Peyer was a Swiss paleontologist and anatomist who served as a professor at the University of Zurich. A major contribution was on the evolution of vertebrate teeth. Peyer was born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, the son of a textile-factory owning namesake father and Sophie Frey. While at secondary school in Schaffhausen he met Ferdinand Schalch in the field who influenced him into paleontology although there had been scientists in the family in the past, including the anatomist Johann Conrad Peyer . In 1905 he went to study at the University of Tübingen and then at Munich where he listed to lectures by Richard von Hertwig, Ferdinand Broili and Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach.
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Zoltán Szilády
1878 - 1947 (69 years)
Zoltán Szilády was a Hungarian museologist, entomologist and university lecturer and teacher. He specialised in Diptera. He was born in Budapest and died aged 68 in Grosspösna, Germany. Works Partial ListA magyar állattani irodalom ismertetése. III. [Description of the Hungarian zoological literature III.] 1890-1900 Über paläarktischen Syrphiden. I-IV. Jegyzetek a legyek lábszerkezetéről [Notes on the structure of Diptera legs] A magyar birodalom legyeinek szinopszisa. VI. Talpaslegyek, Clythidae ; VIII. Lauxaniidae [Synopsis of the flies of the Hungarian empire] .
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Morris Simmonds
1855 - 1925 (70 years)
Morris Simmonds was a German physician and pathologist. He was born in St. Thomas, then part of the Danish West Indies . In 1861 he emigrated with his family to Hamburg, which was then an independent city.
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Giuseppe Gibelli
1831 - 1898 (67 years)
Giuseppe Gibelli was an Italian botanist and lichenologist who was a native of Santa Cristina e Bissone. He originally studied medicine, earning his medical doctorate at the University of Pavia. Later he studied botany and microscopy in Germany. He became a professor of botany at the Universities of Modena and Bologna , and from 1883 to 1898 was a professor of botany and director of the botanical garden at Turin.
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Alice Carter Cook
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
Alice Carter Cook , , was an American botanist and author whose plant collections are now held by the Smithsonian Institution and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Cook was the first woman to receive a PhD in botany from an American university.
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