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,
#18601
Arthur Maillefer
1880 - 1960 (80 years)
Arthur Maillefer was a Swiss botanist and plant geographer. He studied numerous classic botanical disciplines, including plant systematics and floristics. He also was very modern in his use of numerical analysis and mathematics. For instance, he made one of the earliest null models in biogeography showing that - in records of plant or animal species over space - genera accumulate much faster than species and thereby refuting Paul Jaccard's interpretation of the species-to-genus ratio in Jaccard's dispute with Alvar Palmgren. Maillefer's statistical solution to the problem was later supported ...
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Christian Friedrich Ludwig
1751 - 1823 (72 years)
Christian Friedrich Ludwig was a German physician and naturalist. He was the son of botanist Christian Gottlieb Ludwig . He studied medicine at the University of Leipzig, where in 1779 he obtained his habilitation. In 1780/81 he took a study trip to southern Germany, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands and England. Afterwards in Leipzig, he became an associate professor of medicine and natural history . In 1796 he was named a full professor of pathology, and he later attained professorships in therapy and materia medica and surgery . On two separate occasions he served as rector at the Uni...
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Ludwig Lorenz von Liburnau
1856 - 1943 (87 years)
Ludwig Lorenz von Liburnau was an Austrian zoologist. He was the son of naturalist Josef Roman Lorenz von Liburnau . In 1879 he obtained his PhD from the University of Vienna, receiving his habilitation in zoology in 1898. From 1880 to 1922 he was associated with the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna.
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Günther Beck von Mannagetta und Lerchenau
1856 - 1931 (75 years)
Günther Ritter Beck von Mannagetta und Lerchenau was an Austrian botanist. Life Ritter Beck-Mannagetta, son of a state prosecutor, studied at the University of Vienna, where he graduated as Dr. phil. in 1878.
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Julius Caesar Aranzi
1530 - 1589 (59 years)
Julius Caesar Aranzi was a leading figure in the history of the science of human anatomy. He was born in Bologna, the son of Ottaviano di Jacopo and Maria Maggi. Owing to the poverty of the family, he studied with his uncle Bartolomeo Maggi , a famous surgeon who was a lecturer at the University of Bologna as well as court physician to Julius III. He held this uncle in such high esteem that he assumed his surname, calling himself Giulio Cesare Aranzio Maggio.
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Johannes Iversen
1904 - 1971 (67 years)
Johannes Iversen was a Danish palaeoecologist and plant ecologist. Biography He was born in Sønderborg and began studies in botany at the University of Copenhagen in 1923 under professor C.H. Ostenfeld, and with considerable inspiration from prof.em. Christen Raunkiær. At first he worked with macrophyte vegetation of lakes in relation to water pH. The influence from Raunkiær is particularly evident in Iversen's doctoral thesis, in which he divided herbaceous plants into hydrotypes based on experiments and morphological studies: xerophytes, mesophytes, hygrophytes, telmatophytes, amphiphytes and limnophytes.
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Horatio Burt Williams
1877 - 1955 (78 years)
Horatio Burt Williams was an American clinical electrophysiologist. Life Williams was born on September 17, 1877, in Utica, New York. For college studies Williams chose physics. He went to Syracuse University to study medicine, graduating as medical doctor in 1905. As an assistant in physiology at Cornell Medical School, he began his work in electrophysiology. He published an article on electrocardiograms. Williams traveled to Holland to study the methods of Willem Einthoven in 1911.
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Klaus Immelmann
1935 - 1987 (52 years)
Klaus Immelmann was a German ethologist and ornithologist. He undertook field research in Africa and Australia, and published works in German and English. His second and third visit to South Africa were in 1969 and 1971. Immelmann became a permanent executive member of the International Ornithological Union, and its president in 1986. He is the author of Australian finches in bush and aviary , regarded as the first standard text on the subject, and a study of comparative biology of estrildid finches in Australia. His first visit to Australia was in the late 1950s, shortly after receiving his PhD.
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Kinichiro Sakaguchi
1897 - 1994 (97 years)
Kinichiro Sakaguchi was a Japanese agricultural chemist and microbiologist. He was born in Niigata prefecture. He is the inventor of the Sakaguchi flask, a round-bottom long-neck shake flask. In Jōetsu, Niigata, a sake museum has a part of its exhibition dedicated to him.
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Robert Cyril Layton Perkins
1866 - 1955 (89 years)
Robert Cyril Layton Perkins FRS was a distinguished British entomologist, ornithologist, and naturalist noted for his work on the fauna of the islands of Hawaii and on Hymenoptera. He is not to be confused with his son John Frederick Perkins, also a hymenopterist.
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Anatoli Bogdanov
1834 - 1896 (62 years)
Anatoli Petrovich Bogdanov was a Russian Empire zoologist and a pioneer of physical anthropology. He served as a professor of zoology at Moscow University. He was influential in the establishment of Moscow zoo.
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Karl Koch
1809 - 1879 (70 years)
Karl Heinrich Emil Koch was a German botanist. He is best known for his botanical explorations in the Caucasus region, including northeast Turkey. Most of his collections have today been lost. He is also known as the first professional horticultural officer in Germany.
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Karl von Seebach
1839 - 1880 (41 years)
Karl Albert Ludwig von Seebach was a German geologist known for his studies in the field of volcanology. He studied geology and paleontology at Breslau as a pupil of Ferdinand von Roemer, with whom he took a scientific journey to Russia. He also studied at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin, where he was a student of Heinrich Ernst Beyrich. In 1862 he obtained his doctorate at Göttingen with a thesis on conch-fauna of the Weimar Triassic. In 1870 he became a full professor at Göttingen and subsequently chosen as the first director of the geological-palaeontological institute.
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Gerald Francis Yeo
1845 - 1909 (64 years)
Gerald Francis Yeo was an Irish physiologist and academic. Life Born in Dublin on 19 January 1845, he was second son of Henry Yeo of Tansey, Ceanchor Road, Howth, J.P., clerk of the rules, court of exchequer, by his wife Jane, daughter of Captain Ferns. Yeo was educated at the Royal School Dungannon, and at Trinity College Dublin, where he graduated moderator in natural science in 1866, proceeding M.B. and M.Ch. in 1867. In 1868 he gained the gold medal of the Dublin Pathological Society for an essay on renal disease. After studying abroad for three years, a year each in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, he proceeded M.D.
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Leopold Dippel
1827 - 1914 (87 years)
Georg Heinrich Leopold Dippel was a German botanist. He was the son of a royal Bavarian forester, Carl Friedrich Peter Dippel, and Sussanna Purpus. He attended schools in Kaiserslautern and Zweibrücken. From 1845, he studied at the Academy of Forestry in Aschaffenburg, until he graduated in 1848. During his time there he was a member of the Munich Corps Hubertia fraternity. He continued his studies in Jena under the tutelage of Matthias Jacob Schleiden. Under him, he learned more extensively about botany and pioneered his work in microscopy and his research on the structure of plant's bodies....
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David Evans
1909 - 1984 (75 years)
Sir David Gwynne Evans FRS was a British microbiologist. Early life He was born at 15 Kay Street, Atherton, Lancashire. His father was a headmaster and his mother a schoolteacher. They had four children and his elder brother, Meredith, was a professor at Leeds and Manchester Universities and also a Fellow of the Royal Society. His other brother, A. G. Evans became professor of chemistry at University College, Cardiff.
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Karl Theodor Fahr
1877 - 1945 (68 years)
Karl Theodor Fahr was a German pathologist born in Pirmasens of the Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1903 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Giessen, afterwards continuing his studies with Eugen Bostroem in Giessen, under Morris Simmonds in Hamburg and with Ilya Ilyich Metchnikoff in Paris. In 1924, he became director of the pathological institute at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.
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Paul Graebner
1871 - 1933 (62 years)
Carl Otto Robert Peter Paul Graebner was a German botanist. In 1895 he obtained his doctorate in Berlin, successively working as an assistant and then as curator at the botanical gardens. During the 1890s he performed botanical investigations in Jerichower Land and Vorharz with Paul Ascherson .
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Johann Nepomuk von Laicharting
1754 - 1797 (43 years)
Johann Nepomuk von Laicharting was an Austrian entomologist. He was born in Innsbruck on 4 February 1754 and died in the same city on 7 May 1797, and was a Professor of Natural Science in Innsbruck. He described new species and genera of Coleoptera in Verzeichniss und Beschreibung der Tyroler-Insecten. 1. Teil. Kaferartige Insecten. 1. Band. 1781: I-XII, 1-248. - Zurich, bey Johann Casper Fuessly 1781. In English, lists and descriptions of Tyrol insects - beetles. Presumably this was intended to cover all Austrian insects but no further parts were published.
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Heinrich Schenck
1860 - 1927 (67 years)
Johann Heinrich Rudolf Schenck was a German botanist who was a native of Siegen. He was a brother to geographer Adolf Schenck . Heinrich Schenck initially studied natural sciences at the University of Bonn , then continued his studies in Berlin under August Wilhelm Eichler and Simon Schwendener . Later he returned to Bonn as a student of Eduard Strasburger , receiving his doctorate in 1884. In 1889 he became a lecturer in Bonn, and in 1896 relocated to the Polytechnic Institute of Darmstadt, where he was appointed director of the botanical garden.
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Friedrich Kasimir Medikus
1736 - 1808 (72 years)
Friedrich Kasimir Medikus was a German physician and botanist. He was born at Grumbach and became director of the University of Mannheim and curator of the botanical garden at Mannheim. He encouraged the cultivation of locust trees in Europe.
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Ernest Melville DuPorte
1891 - 1981 (90 years)
Ernest Melville DuPorte was a Canadian entomologist best known for his research in insect morphology. He has been described as "a father of confederation for entomology" by Robin Stewart. Early life DuPorte was born in 1891 in Nevis, one of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean that was then part of the British West Indies. He began his education at the Charlestown Boys Primary School in Charlestown, where he excelled and drew the attention of H.C. Huggins, who awarded him a scholarship for secondary school studies at St. Kitts-Nevis Grammar School in Basseterre.
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Sven Nilsson
1787 - 1883 (96 years)
Sven Nilsson was a Swedish zoologist and archaeologist. Life and work Nilsson was director of the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet from 1828 to 1831, professor of Natural History at Lund University from 1832 to 1856, and rector of Lund University from 1845 to 1846.
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John N. Danesh
#18625
Bohumil Shimek
1861 - 1937 (76 years)
Bohumil Shimek was an American naturalist, conservationist, and a professor at the University of Iowa. The Shimek State Forest in Iowa is named after him. Life Family and early life Shimek was born on a farm near Shueyville, Iowa to Czech parents, Maria Theresa and Francis Joseph Shimek, who came to the United States to escape religious and political persecution under the Austrian Empire. In 1866, the family moved to Iowa City to have access to medical care for his mother, who was suffering from tuberculosis. However, she succumbed to the disease soon afterwards. Shimek's father worked as a cobbler.
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Antonín Frič
1832 - 1913 (81 years)
Antonín Jan Frič was a Czech paleontologist, biologist and geologist, living during the Austria-Hungary era. Professor at the Charles University and later became director of the National Museum in Prague. He became famous for his contributions on the field of Permo - Carboniferous ecosystems.
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George Vasey
1822 - 1893 (71 years)
George Vasey was an English-born American botanist who collected a lot in Illinois before integrating the United States Department of Agriculture , where he became Chief Botanist and curator of the greatly expanded National Herbarium.
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Ransom Asa Moore
1861 - 1941 (80 years)
Professor Ransom Asa Moore was an agronomist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was born 1861 in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin and died in 1941 in Madison, Wisconsin. He has been called "Father of Wisconsin 4-H", the builder and "Daddy" of the Agriculture Short Course Program, and the Father of the Agronomy Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agriculture.
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Tang Feifan
1897 - 1958 (61 years)
Tang Feifan was a Chinese medical microbiologist best known for culturing the Chlamydia trachomatis agent in the yolk sacs of eggs. Tang was persecuted during the "Pulling Out Bourgeois White Flag Movement" and committed suicide in 1958.
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Paul Grawitz
1850 - 1932 (82 years)
Paul Albert Grawitz was a German pathologist. He was an older brother to hematologist Ernst Grawitz , and father-in-law to pathologist Otto Busse . While he studied medicine at the University of Berlin, he was an assistant to pathologist Rudolf Virchow . After graduation, he continued as an assistant to Virchow until 1886. From 1886 to 1921 he taught as a professor at the University of Greifswald, where he also served as director of the pathological institute.
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Robert Harold Compton
1886 - 1979 (93 years)
Robert Harold Compton was a South African botanist. The Compton Herbarium at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, which he founded in Cape Town in 1939, was named in his honour. Career He attended Cambridge University from 1905 to 1909, attaining a double first class and distinction and later an M.A. He stayed on at Cambridge from 1911 to 1913 as a Demonstrator in Botany, and joined a field expedition to New Caledonia in 1914, collecting extensively and discovering some new genera and species. While at Cambridge, his main publications were in the area of anatomy and morphology of Gymnosperms, Pteridophytes and Angiosperm seedlings.
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Clara Eaton Cummings
1855 - 1906 (51 years)
Clara Eaton Cummings was an American cryptogamic botanist and Hunnewell Professor of Cryptogamic Botany at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Life and education Cummings was born in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on July 13, 1855 to Noah Conner and Elmira George Cummings. In 1876, she enrolled at the women's liberal arts college Wellesley, only one year after the opening of the institution.
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William Smith Greenfield
1846 - 1919 (73 years)
William Smith Greenfield FRSE FRCPE LLD was a British anatomist. He was an expert on anthrax. Life He was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire on 9 January 1846. He studied Medicine at the University of London graduating MB BS in 1872. In 1878 he succeeded John Burdon-Sanderson as Professor of Pathology at the Brown Institute. In 1881 he went to Edinburgh to become Professor of Pathology and Clinical Medicine.
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Julio Augusto Henriques
1838 - 1928 (90 years)
Júlio Augusto Henriques was a Portuguese botanist and professor at the University of Coimbra. He developed the Herbarium of the University and Coimbra Botanical Garden. He also founded the Broterian Society, which brought together various scientists botanists, geologists and naturalists. He was a large admirer of the work of Charles Darwin. He also wrote many articles about the flora of Portugal.
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Tsunamitsu Adachi
1901 - 1981 (80 years)
was a Japanese entomologist. A soldier from 1921 to 1922, Tsunamitsu Adachi entered the faculty of agriculture of the University of Tokyo in 1925. Here he became an assistant in 1932 then an associate professor in 1948. In 1954, he accepted the post of professor at Toyo University. He retired in 1976.
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Lucien Leon Hauman
1880 - 1965 (85 years)
Lucien Leon Hauman-Merck was a Belgian botanist, who studied and collected plants in South America and Africa. He received his education in Gembloux, and afterwards relocated to Argentina, where he obtained a position in the department of agronomy and veterinary medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. From 1904 to 1925 he taught classes in botany, plant pathology and agricultural microbiology at the university. In 1910 he laid the foundations for its botanical garden.
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Paul Ferdinand Schilder
1886 - 1940 (54 years)
Paul Ferdinand Schilder was an Austrian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and medical researcher. Schilder's research work in both neurophysiology and neuropathology, coupled with an active interest in philosophy, led to his involvement in psychoanalysis. He became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society founded by Sigmund Freud, although he never underwent analysis himself. He deviated from accepted psychoanalytic doctrine and published his own ideas. He started the integration of psychoanalytic theory into psychiatry, and he is considered one of the founding fathers of group psychotherapy.
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Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe
1813 - 1893 (80 years)
Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe was an English entomologist mainly interested in beetles. Biography He was born in Penzance, Cornwall and trained at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. Appointed surgeon in the Navy he served on Australian, West Indian and Mediterranean stations. He married a Miss Mary Glasson of Cornwall and settled at Trewhiddle near St Austell where his wife's property produced china clay. Widowed in 1851 he settled in London devoting himself to natural history and entomology in particular. The results of collecting trips to Europe, North Africa and the Lower Amazons were poor and Pascoe worked mainly on insects collected by others.
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Andrew Buchanan
1798 - 1882 (84 years)
Andrew Buchanan was a Scottish surgeon and academic. He served as Regius Professor of the Institutes of Medicine at the University of Glasgow from 1839 to 1876. He practised as a surgeon at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary 1835 to 1862. He was President of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow from 1879 to 1880. He founded the Glasgow Medical Journal in 1928, and became its joint-editor.
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Maurice Loyal Huggins
1897 - 1981 (84 years)
Maurice Loyal Huggins was a scientist who independently conceived the idea of hydrogen bonding and who was an early advocate for their role in stabilizing protein secondary structure. An important polymer theory, Flory–Huggins theory, is also named after him.
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Johann Beckmann
1739 - 1811 (72 years)
Johann Beckmann was a German scientific author and coiner of the word technology, to mean the science of trades. He was the first man to teach technology and write about it as an academic subject. Life He was born on 4 June 1739 at Hoya in Hanover, where his father was postmaster and receiver of taxes. He was educated at Stade and the university of Göttingen, where he studied theology, mathematics, physics, natural history, and public finance and administration. After completing his studies, in 1762 he made a study tour through Brunswick and the Dutch Republic examining mines, factories, natu...
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Halvor Heyerdahl Rasch
1805 - 1883 (78 years)
Halvor Heyerdahl Rasch was a Norwegian zoologist and educator. He was born at Eidsberg in Østfold, Norway. Rasch studied botany and zoology at the University of Christiania . He was a professor of zoology and natural science at the University of Oslo from 1852 to 1874, having previously been a lector since 1847.
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Leon C. Snyder
1908 - 1987 (79 years)
Leon Carleton Snyder was an American professor, writer, and radio personality and co-founder of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Through his work, research, broadcasts, and books he changed the way Minnesotans viewed the possibilities of gardening in a northern climate.
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Gustaf Otto Rosenberg
1872 - 1948 (76 years)
Gustaf Otto Rosenberg, termed Otto Rosenberg in publications, born June 9, 1872, in Gothenburg, Sweden, died November 30, 1948, was a Swedish botanist; son of Johan Olof Rosenberg. Rosenberg studied in Uppsala, Stockholm and Bonn, he gained a bachelor's degree at the University of Uppsala in 1895, and a PhD in Bonn in 1899 where he studied under Eduard Strasburger . His PhD thesis addressed the cytological changes that occur in the cells of the Sundew plant when they are irritated. Also in 1899, he became an associate professor of botany at the University of Stockholm. Rosenberg worked at the...
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J. Douglas Miller
#18646
Marie Agnes Hinrichs
1892 - 1979 (87 years)
Marie Agnes Hinrichs Ph.D., M.D. was an American scientist specializing in zoology, physiology, and physical health. She earned a Ph.D. in zoology in 1923, conferred from the University of Chicago. She taught at the University of Chicago, before moving on to direct departments at Southern Illinois University and University of Illinois. She became known for her research into the effects of both ultraviolet radiation and visible radiation on living matter, with particular interest in the effects on developing embryos.
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Edward Angus Burt
1859 - 1939 (80 years)
Edward Angus Burt was an American mycologist and an authority on the resupinate fungus family Thelephoraceae. He received his M.A. in 1894 and PhD. in 1895, both from Harvard University under William G. Farlow and Roland Thaxter. He became a Professor of Natural History at Middlebury College in 1895, then both a Professor of Botany at the Henry Shaw School of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis, and a mycologist for the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1913. He also worked on a systematic description of basidiomycetes such as Merulius and fungi from Vermont, Siberia, and Java.
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J. Russell Lindsay
#18649
Ada Hayden
1884 - 1950 (66 years)
Ada Hayden was an American botanist, educator, and preservationist. She was the curator of the Iowa State University Herbarium, which was renamed the Ada Hayden Herbarium in her honour in 1988. During her career, she added more than 40,000 specimens to the herbarium. Her studies and conservation work were particularly important in ensuring the preservation of the tallgrass prairie.
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Lewis Radcliffe
1880 - 1950 (70 years)
Lewis Radcliffe was a naturalist, malacologist, and ichthyologist. He was Deputy Commissioner of the United States Bureau of Fisheries until 1932 and was the assistant naturalist under Hugh McCormick Smith for the 1907-1910 Philippines Expedition. During his life, he described numerous new species of fish, including several sharks. He was also the director of the Oyster Institute of North America until his death in 1950.
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