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,
#18201
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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Jacques Denys Choisy
1799 - 1859 (60 years)
Jacques Denys Choisy was a Swiss Protestant clergyman and botanist. He studied theology, law, humanities and sciences at the Académie de Genève. In 1821 he became ordained as a minister, and during the following year, furthered his education in Paris. During his stay in Paris, he was accepted as a member of the Société d'histoire naturelle. Following his return to Geneva in 1824, he was named chair of rational philosophy at the Academy, a position he maintained until 1847.
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William Augustus Hinton
1883 - 1959 (76 years)
William Augustus Hinton was an Americann bacteriologist, pathologist and educator. He was the first Black professor in the history of Harvard University. A pioneer in the field of public health, Hinton developed a test for syphilis which, because of its accuracy, was used by the United States Public Health Service. In 1975, the Massachusetts legislature made what had become known as the "Hinton Laboratory" in the scientific community official, passing a bill to rename the state laboratory the "Dr. William A. Hinton Laboratory." In 2019, Hinton's portrait was placed in Harvard Medical School's...
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Dimitrie Voinov
1867 - 1951 (84 years)
Dimitrie Voinov was a Romanian zoologist, histologist and cytologist. Born in Iași, he was the adopted son of politician Nicolae Voinov. He graduated from the University of Paris in 1890, going on to earn a doctorate. He extensively studied insect orders such as Coleoptera and Lepidoptera. His investigations into reproduction focused on studying the shape and structure of sperm cells. He also looked at the components of cytoplasm, including mitochondria and vacuoles.
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Julien Fraipont
1857 - 1910 (53 years)
Julien Jean Joseph Fraipont was a Belgian paleontologist who worked as a professor of zoology at the University of Liège and is best known for his descriptive work on Neanderthal man. His son Charles Fraipont also became a paleontologist.
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Mikhail Piatrovich Tomin
1883 - 1967 (84 years)
Mikhail Piatrovich Tomin was a Russian and Soviet lichenologist. Life and career Mikhail Piatrovich Tomin was born on July 25, 1883, in the village of Sharovichi, Kaluga Governorate. He studied at the Moscow Agricultural Institute, from which he graduated in 1912. Until 1929, Tomin worked at the Voronezh Agricultural Institute , after which he moved to Arkhangelsk, becoming head of the department of botany at the Forestry Engineering Institute. From 1931 to 1934 M.P. Tomin was a professor at the Orenburg Institute of Large Beef Cattle Breeding and Veterinary Medicine. In 1937, Tomin received his doctorate in biological sciences.
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Charles Edward Faxon
1846 - 1918 (72 years)
Charles Edward Faxon was an American botanical artist and instructor of botany born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. In 1867 he received his degree in civil engineering from Lawrence Scientific School in Cambridge. From 1879 to 1884, he taught classes in botany at the Bussey Institute.
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Wilhelm Mayer-Gross
1889 - 1961 (72 years)
Wilhelm Mayer-Gross was a German-British psychiatrist and professor. He was one of the founders of the British school of psychiatry. Early life and education He was born in Bingen am Rhein, Germany, however in 1933 he moved to England. He was one of the disciples of Franz Nissl.
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Viktor Uhlig
1857 - 1911 (54 years)
Viktor Karl Uhlig was an Austrian geologist and paleontologist. Biography He studied geology and mineralogy at the universities of Graz and Vienna, receiving his doctorate in 1879. Afterwards he worked as a research assistant under Melchior Neumayr in Vienna, and in 1891 was named an associate professor of geology and mineralogy at the German Polytechnic in Prague. Two years later he became a full professor, and in 1900 returned to Vienna as a professor of geology and paleontology. In 1907 he was a co-founder of the Geologischen Gesellschaft in Wien.
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Philip B. Hawk
1874 - 1966 (92 years)
Philip Bovier Hawk was an American biochemist, nutritionist, and amateur tennis player. Biography Hawk was born in East Branch, New York. He studied at Wesleyan University, where he obtained his B.S. degree in 1898. He worked as an assistant to Wilbur Olin Atwater in nutrition research at Wesleyan University .
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Francis Hobart Herrick
1858 - 1940 (82 years)
Francis Hobart Herrick was an American writer, natural history illustrator and Professor of Biology at Adelbert College of Western Reserve University. Herrick attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire from where he went to Dartmouth College in 1881. His Ph.D. was obtained at Johns Hopkins University in 1888. The embryology and biology of shellfish, especially lobster, became his consuming interest.
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John E. Cooper
#18232
Heinrich Moritz Gaede
1795 - 1834 (39 years)
Heinrich Moritz Gaede, also Henri-Maurice Gaede , was a German naturalist and entomologist. He was a professor in Lüttich and at the University of Liège. Gaede wrote Beitrage zur Anatomie und Physiologie der Medusen, nebst einem Versuch einer Einleitung ueber das, was den altern Natursorschern in Hinsicht dieser Thiere bekannt war and Beytrage zur Anatomie der Insekten Altona, J. F. Hammerich .
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John L. Hamerton
#18234
Jane Ingham
1897 - 1982 (85 years)
Rose Marie "Jane" Ingham was an English botanist and scientific translator. She was appointed research assistant to Joseph Hubert Priestley in the Botany Department at the University of Leeds, and together, they were the first to separate cell walls from the root tip of broad beans. They analysed these cell walls and concluded that they contained protein. She carried out experiments on the cork layer of trees to study how cells function under a change of orientation and found profound differences in cell division and elongation in the epidermal layer of plants.
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Elias Tillandz
1640 - 1693 (53 years)
Elias Tillandz was a Swedish-born doctor and botanist who worked in Finland. He was the professor of medicine at the Academy of Turku. He wrote the country's first botanical work, the Catalogus Plantarum, which was first published in 1673. As a doctor he also prepared medicines for his patients by using his extensive knowledge of plants.
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John B. Balinsky
1934 - 1983 (49 years)
John Boris Balinsky - South African and American zoologist of Ukrainian origin. His father Boris Balinsky was an embryologist. Life Balinsky was born in Kyiv into a family of biologists; his father was university professor Boris Balinsky and his mother, Catherine Singaiivska, was a laboratory researcher. His mother died after return from a Soviet prison during World War II.
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Elva Lawton
1896 - 1993 (97 years)
Elva Lawton was an American botanist and bryologist known for her research on ferns early in her career and her late-career comprehensive study of the mosses of the Western United States. Early life and education Elva Lawton was born in West Middletown, Pennsylvania on April 3, 1896. Prior to matriculating at university, she was an elementary school teacher in Pennsylvania from 1915 to 1919. She attended the University of Pittsburgh for her bachelor's degree, which she earned in 1923, and her master's degree, which she earned in 1925. From 1923 to 1925 she was also a high school biology and Latin teacher in Crafton, Pennsylvania.
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Ove Dahl
1862 - 1940 (78 years)
Ove Christian Dahl was a Norwegian botanist. He was born in Orkdal. He graduated in philology from the University of Kristiania in 1886, and then worked as a teacher. His interests eventually turned towards botany, and he was appointed at the Botanical Museum in Kristiania from 1893 to 1922, the first years as assistant to professor Axel Blytt. He is particularly known for his plant geographical works, and also for completing Blytt's Norwegian flora in 1906. This flora was the only such work in Norway until the 1940s. His later years were tragic, and he spent his last eighteen years at a psyc...
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Sextus Otto Lindberg
1835 - 1889 (54 years)
Sextus Otto Lindberg was a Swedish physician and botanist, known as a bryologist. Life He was born in Stockholm, and educated in Uppsala. He worked in the Grand Duchy of Finland, then part of the Russian Empire. He became professor of botany, and dean of the physics-mathematics faculty, at the University of Helsingfors.
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Alexander von Lingelsheim
1874 - 1937 (63 years)
Alexander von Lingelsheim was a German botanist and pharmacist. He studied natural sciences at the University of Breslau, and for many years he worked as an assistant in its botanical garden and museum . In the meantime, he received his PhD from the University of Rostock and later taught classes at the Technische Hochschule Breslau . In 1929 he founded a pharmacy in Breslau, and three years later, became an associate professor of pharmacognosy at the university.
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Karl Wilhelm Ideler
1795 - 1860 (65 years)
Karl Wilhelm Ideler was a German psychiatrist. He was born in Bentwisch and died in Kumlosen near Wittenberge. Life and career In 1820 he earned his doctorate from the Friedrich Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and spent the next several years as a general practitioner in the cities of Bernau, Rathenow and Genthin. In 1828 he returned to Berlin as head of the department for mental illness at the Charité. In 1840 he became a full professor and director of the psychiatric clinic. From 1839 until his death in 1860, he taught classes at the University of Berlin. His uncle was noted astronomer Christi...
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Ida Maclean
1877 - 1944 (67 years)
Ida Smedley Maclean was an English biochemist and the first woman admitted to the London Chemical Society. Early life and education Ida was born in Birmingham to William Smedley, a businessman, and Annie Elizabeth Duckworth. She was taught by her mother at home until the age of nine and lived in "a cultured and progressive home". She was educated at King Edward VI High School for Girls, Birmingham from 1886 to 1896, when she won a scholarship and began her studies at Newnham College, Cambridge. In the university's Natural Sciences Tripos she got a first class in part one and a second class in part two, studying chemistry and physiology.
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James Walker Dawson
1870 - 1927 (57 years)
James Walker Dawson was a Scottish pathologist remembered for his work on multiple sclerosis including the description of the eponymous Dawson's fingers. Biography James Dawson started his medical training at the University of Edinburgh in 1888, but had to interrupt his studies due to tuberculosis. He spent 13 years overseas, mainly in India, the United States, Canada and New Zealand, and worked as a lumberjack and sheep farmer during that time. In 1903 he resumed his training, and graduated MB CM the next year. He started research into disorders of the nervous system at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh under Alexander Bruce.
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Miloš Marić
1885 - 1944 (59 years)
Miloš Marić was a Russian scientist of Serbian origin, head of the department of histology at the Saratov State University. He entered the history of medicine with his most important research in the field of mitosis and amitosis, which laid the foundation for cloning. His older sister was Mileva Marić, the first wife of Albert Einstein who was also a scientist in her own right.
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Edith Grace White
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Edith Grace White was an American zoologist known for her studies of elasmobranchs . She was a professor of biology at Wilson College, and was a research associate of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
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Stanisław Błeszyński
1927 - 1969 (42 years)
Stanisław Błeszyński was a Polish entomologist and lepidopterist specializing in Crambidae, the grass moths. Błeszyński worked at the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals of the Polish Academy of Sciences beginning in 1945. He headed the Laboratory of Insects there from 1958 until 1967. He then moved to Germany, where he worked at the Zoologisches Forschungsinstitut und Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn.
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Gladys Dick
1881 - 1963 (82 years)
Gladys Rowena Henry Dick was an American physician who co-developed an antitoxin and vaccine for scarlet fever with her husband, George F. Dick. Biography Gladys Rowena Henry was born in Pawnee City, Nebraska in 1881 and earned her B.S. in zoology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1900. She was a member of the Pi Beta Phi chapter at the University of Nebraska. Because her mother initially objected to Gladys attending medical school, she took graduate classes at Nebraska until 1903, then moved to Baltimore to attend Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Graduated in 1907 with her M.D., she then trained for a year at the University of Berlin.
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Herman Maximilien de Burlet
1883 - 1957 (74 years)
Herman Maximilien de Burlet , was a Dutch anatomist, embryologist, physiologist and pathologist.
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Mary Sophie Young
1872 - 1919 (47 years)
Mary Sophie Young was a botanist at the University of Texas significant for her field trips where she collected large quantities of specimens making her a key contributor to plant taxonomy in Texas.
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Victor C. Twitty
1901 - 1967 (66 years)
Victor Chandler Twitty was an American biologist and embryologist. Twitty was chair of the biological sciences department, Stanford University, president of the American Society of Zoologists, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Herzstein Professor of Biology, and a Guggenheim fellow. Born in Martin County, Indiana, he graduated from Butler College in 1925, received a doctorate from Yale University in 1929, and joined faculty of Stanford in 1932, becoming full professor in 1936.
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