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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Biology,
#18851
David Cooper
1931 - 1986 (55 years)
David Graham Cooper was a South African-born psychiatrist and theorist who was prominent in the anti-psychiatry movement. Cooper graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1955. R.D. Laing claimed that Cooper underwent Soviet training to prepare him as an Anti Apartheid communist revolutionary, but after completing his course he never returned to South Africa out of fear that B.O.S.S. would eliminate him. He moved to London, where he worked at several hospitals. From 1961 to 1965 he ran an experimental unit for young people with schizophrenia called Villa 21, which he saw as a revolutionary 'anti-hospital' and a prototype for the later Kingsley Hall Community.
Go to Profile#18852
E. J. Conway
1893 - 1968 (75 years)
Edward Joseph Conway FRS was an Irish biochemist known for works pertaining to electrolyte physiology and analytical chemistry. Education Conway was born in Nenagh, North Tipperary and educated at Blackrock College and University College Dublin, graduating M.Sc.. After winning a studentship to the University of Frankfurt am Main, where he was awarded D.Sc., he returned to Ireland to become the first Professor of Biochemistry and Pharmacology at University College Dublin in 1932, a post he held until 1963.
Go to Profile#18853
Edward J. Wickson
1848 - 1923 (75 years)
Edward James Wickson was an American agronomist and journalist who was a leader in agricultural education in California in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Edward was the son of George Guest and Kitty Ray Wickson, the grandson of James and Jane Tuesman Wickson, immigrants to Canada in 1834.
Go to Profile#18854
Alfred Charles True
1853 - 1929 (76 years)
Alfred Charles True, Ph.D., Sc.D. was a United States educator and agriculturist. Biography A son of Charles Kittredge True, he was born at Middletown, Connecticut. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1873, from which he also received his Sc.D. He was a teacher at Westfield normal school in Westfield, Massachusetts, for several years, did graduate studies at Harvard in 1882-84, and served as an instructor at Wesleyan in 1884-88.
Go to Profile#18855
Ferdinand Albert Pax
1885 - 1964 (79 years)
Ferdinand Albert Pax was a German zoologist who worked at the University of Wroclaw. He was the author of a monograph on the Hexacorallia in the series edited by Willy Kükenthal. Pax was born in Breslau to the botanist Ferdinand Albin Pax and Marie Serbin. He went to grammar school at Breslau and then to the university. He later moved to Zurich where he majored in zoology. He worked at the Zoological Station in Trieste in 1906 under Carl Isidor Cori and then at the University of Bergen where he specialized in marine biology under Adolf Appellöf . He received a doctorate for his work on corals Actiniidae from Breslau with the guidance of Kükenthal.
Go to Profile#18856
James Halliday McDunnough
1877 - 1962 (85 years)
James Halliday McDunnough was a Canadian linguist, musician, and entomologist best known for his work with North American Lepidoptera, but who also made important contributions about North American Ephemeroptera.
Go to Profile#18857
Cornelia Channing
1938 - 1985 (47 years)
Cornelia "Nina" Channing was an American professor of physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Her research focused on endocrinology and fertility; along with longtime collaborators Neena Schwartz and Darrell Ward, she was involved in the discovery of hormones involved in regulating the female reproductive cycle. She died of breast cancer in 1985.
Go to Profile#18858
Frederic Edward Clements
#18859
John Nathaniel Couch
1896 - 1986 (90 years)
John Nathaniel Couch was an American mycologist. He was a professor at the Department of Botany at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for over six decades. External links National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
Go to Profile#18860
Reinhold Ferdinand Sahlberg
1811 - 1874 (63 years)
Reinhold Ferdinand Sahlberg was a Finnish naturalist notably specialising in entomology. He was the son of the entomologist and botanist Carl Reinhold Sahlberg and the father of the entomologist and explorer Johan Reinhold Sahlberg .
Go to Profile#18861
Manly Miles
1826 - 1898 (72 years)
Manly Miles was an American zoologist and agriculturalist. Manly Miles was born at Homer, New York, the son of Manly Miles, a soldier of the Revolution, and Mary Cushman, a lineal descendant of Miles Standish. In 1837 his family moved to Flint, Michigan, where he worked on the farm, to his common school education adding reading and study during spare moments. In 1850 he graduated M.D. from Rush Medical College, Chicago, and practiced in Flint until 1859, when he was appointed by Governor Moses Wisner assistant state geologist in the department of zoology. In 1860 he was appointed professor of animal physiology and zoology in the Michigan State Agricultural College at Lansing.
Go to Profile#18862
Anna Kharadze
1905 - 1971 (66 years)
Anna Kharadze was a Soviet Georgian biologist, systematist, florist, botanist-geographer, collector, a specialist in the flora of Georgia and the Caucasus as a whole. Early life and education Anna Kharadze was born in the city of Elizavetpole in the family of a school teacher of natural sciences. She received her secondary education at a technical school in Tbilisi and then entered the biological department of the natural faculty of Tbilisi State University, from which she graduated in 1927.
Go to Profile#18863
Eduard Brandt
1839 - 1891 (52 years)
Eduard Karlovich Brandt was a Russo-German comparative anatomist and zoologist who contributed to studies on the nervous system of insects. He served as a professor at the Imperial Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg.
Go to Profile#18864
Fabián García
1871 - 1948 (77 years)
Dr. Fabián García was a Mexican-American horticulturist who has been described as "the father of the New Mexican food industry". Among other things, he helped to develop new varieties of chile peppers, pecans, and onions that are still grown in New Mexico. For example, in 1921, he introduced the 'New Mexico No. 9', a strain of chile pepper which became the genetic ancestor of all New Mexico chiles.
Go to Profile#18865
Octave Duboscq
1868 - 1943 (75 years)
Octave Joseph Duboscq was a French zoologist, mycologist and parasitologist. He obtained doctorates in medicine and sciences at the University of Caen. From 1904 to 1923, he was chair of zoology at the University of Montpellier, afterwards attaining the chair of marine biology at the Sorbonne. At the same time, he was also named director of the Arago laboratory in Banyuls-sur-Mer, and in 1931 became manager of the biological station at Villefranche-sur-Mer.
Go to Profile#18866
Joseph Reynolds Green
1848 - 1914 (66 years)
Joseph Reynolds Green was an English botanist, physiologist and chemist whose research into plant enzymes was influential in the development of the discipline of biochemistry. He held the chair in Botany at The Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain and lectured at the University of Liverpool and Downing College, Cambridge. In 1895 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Go to Profile#18867
James Thomas Wilson
1861 - 1945 (84 years)
James Thomas Wilson FRS was a Professor of Anatomy at the University of Cambridge and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1886, he was invited by T.P. Anderson Stewart to become a demonstrator in anatomy in the recently established medical school at the University of Sydney, and was soon promoted to the new post of Challis Professor of Anatomy in Sydney. He subsequently became dean of the Faculty of Medicine, then later moved back to the UK to take up the post of Professor of Anatomy in Cambridge from 1920 and a fellowship at St John's College.
Go to Profile#18868
Alf Brodal
1910 - 1988 (78 years)
Alf Brodal was a Norwegian professor of anatomy. Personal life He was born in Kristiania as a son of the doctor of engineering Peter Brodal and his wife Helene Kathrine Obenauer . He was a brother of violinist Jon Brodal and psalm writer Anne Margarethe Brodal . Brodal was married to physiotherapist Inger Olivia Hannestad . He died in 1988 in Bærum. Their son Per Alf Brodal also became a professor of medicine.
Go to Profile#18869
Pieter Pauw
1564 - 1617 (53 years)
Pieter Pauw , was a Dutch botanist and anatomist. He was a student of Hieronymus Fabricius. He was the first Anatomy Professor at University of Leiden. Biography He was the son of Pieter Pauw Adriaanszoon who settled in Amsterdam, then later in Alkmaar.
Go to Profile#18870
Franz Firbas
1902 - 1964 (62 years)
Franz Firbas was a German botanist who taught at the University of Göttingen. From 1952 to 1964, he was director of their Systematisch-Geobotanisches Institut. Former students include Otto Ludwig Lange, Gerhard Lang, and Heinz Ellenberg.
Go to Profile#18871
Karl Gottfried Paul Döhle
1855 - 1928 (73 years)
Karl Gottfried Paul Döhle was a German pathologist who was a native of Mühlhausen. He was a student at Tübingen, Leipzig, Strassburg and Kiel, where he received his doctorate in 1882. Afterwards he was an assistant at the pathological institute in Kiel, where in 1908 he was appointed head of the pathological institute. In 1921 he attained the title of professor ordinarius at the University of Kiel, retiring a few years later in 1924.
Go to Profile#18872
John Hamilton
1899 - 1934 (35 years)
John "Red" Hamilton was a Canadian criminal and bank robber active in the 1920s–1930s, most notably as an associate of John Dillinger. He is best known for his lingering death and secret burial after being mortally wounded during a robbery.
Go to Profile#18873
Volney Morgan Spalding
1849 - 1918 (69 years)
Volney Morgan Spalding was an American botanist affiliated with the University of Michigan for twenty-eight years, and for most of this period was head of the botany department. Spalding was born in East Bloomfield, New York, the son of Frederick Austin and Almira Spalding. His father was of English descent and his mother of Scotch-Irish descent. He received a preliminary education in the public schools of Gorham, New York, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. He entered the University of Michigan in 1869 and was graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1873. His further preparation for professional life included ...
Go to Profile#18874
Oscar Werner Tiegs
1897 - 1956 (59 years)
Oscar Werner Tiegs FRS FAA was an Australian zoologist whose career spanned the first half of the 20th century. His contribution to the division of the phylum arthropoda into two parts, one including insects, myriapods, and velvet worms, and the other including trilobites, crustaceans, and arachnids, is considered to be an important contribution to zoology. He was acknowledged as having a remarkable ability for apt and beautiful drawings, and as being an excellent microscopist, as having a great capacity for meticulous accuracy, persistent work, and shrewd elicitation of relationships from massive detail.
Go to Profile#18875
Sven Ludvig Lovén
1809 - 1895 (86 years)
Prof Sven Ludvig Lovén , was a Swedish marine zoologist and malacologist. The Sven Lovén Centre for Marine Sciences within the University of Gothenburg was named in his honour. Life Lovén was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He studied at Uppsala University in 1823, and enrolled at Lund University in 1824. He completed his studies with a Magister degree in 1829. The following year, he was appointed associate professor of zoology at Lund University. During the years 1830–1831, Lovén traveled to Berlin where he studied anatomy and microscopy techniques under the guidance of Christian Gottfried Eh...
Go to Profile#18876
Antonio Musa Brassavola
1500 - 1555 (55 years)
Antonio Musa Brassavola was an Italian physician and one of the most famous of his time. He studied under Niccolò Leoniceno and Giovanni Manardo. He was the friend and physician of Ercole II, the duke of Este. He was also the consulting physician of Kings Francis I, Charles V, Henry VIII and Popes Paul III, Leo X, Clement VIII and Julius III. He performed the first successful tracheotomy, and published an account of it in 1546. He was the chair of philosophy in Ferrara and also studied botany and medicine. A genus of orchid, called Brassavola, is named after him.
Go to Profile#18877
Hiroshi Tamiya
1903 - 1984 (81 years)
Hiroshi Tamiya was an important Japanese plant biochemist and microbiologist. He is notable for mid-twentieth century research he did on the thermodynamics of the light-independent reactions of photosynthesis.
Go to Profile#18878
Cândido Firmino de Mello-Leitão
1886 - 1948 (62 years)
Cândido Firmino de Mello-Leitão was a Brazilian zoologist who is considered the founder of Arachnology in South America, publishing 198 papers on the taxonomy of Arachnida. He was also involved with education, writing high-school textbooks, and contributed to biogeography, with essays on the distribution of Arachnida in the South American continent.
Go to Profile#18879
Jan Noskiewicz
1890 - 1963 (73 years)
Noskiewicz was born in Sanok. He was Professor of Systematic Zoology and Zoogeography at Breslau now Wroclaw University. He died in Wroclaw. His collection of 30,000 Aculeata specimens, including holotypes, syntypes and paratypes of is in Museum of Natural History Wroclaw University.
Go to Profile#18880
Konstantin Deryugin
1878 - 1938 (60 years)
Konstantin Mikhailovich Deryugin was Russian Empire and Soviet oceanographer and marine biologist. He served as a professor of hydrology at St. Petersburg University and took part in a number of oceanographic expeditions. Mount Deryugin and the Deryugin basin in the Sea of Okhotsk are named after him.
Go to Profile#18881
Nils Heribert-Nilsson
1883 - 1955 (72 years)
Nils Heribert-Nilsson was a Swedish botanist and geneticist. Heribert-Nilsson received his Ph.D. at Lund University in 1915 with the thesis Die Spaltungserscheinungen der Oenothera lamarckiana. From 1934 to 1948 he was professor of botany, in particular systematics, morphology and plant geography, at Lund University.
Go to Profile#18882
Ivan Mesyatsev
1885 - 1940 (55 years)
Ivan Illarionovich Mesyatsev was a Russian and Soviet zoologist who specialized in oceanographic research. He was responsible for the first definitions of fish schools in ichthyology. An undersea mountain in the Atlantic, a Cape on Eva-Liv Island, and a mountain in Antarctica are named after Mesyatsev. Mesyatsev was born in what is now Krasnodar Krai and studied at the Vladikavkaz gymnasium and St Petersburg Institute of Technology before going to Moscow University where he graduated in 1912. He worked on embryology and histology but an interest in marine fishes was sparked after a visit to the marine biological stations in France in 1910.
Go to Profile#18883
James Edward Collin
1876 - 1968 (92 years)
James Edward Collin was an English entomologist who specialised in Diptera. He was the author of Empididae. British Flies, Volume 6. University Press, Cambridge . This was the third volume in an uncompleted series begun by his uncle George Henry Verrall.
Go to Profile#18884
Thomas Hastie Bryce
1862 - 1946 (84 years)
Prof Thomas Hastie Bryce LLD FRS FSA FRSE was a Scottish anatomist, medical author and archaeologist. He was Regius Professor of Anatomy at the University of Glasgow 1909 to 1935 and also Curator of the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. He is primarily remembered for his work on human embryology and comparative anatomy. His students referred to him as Tommy Bryce.
Go to Profile#18885
Hans Molisch
1856 - 1937 (81 years)
Hans Molisch was a Czech-Austrian botanist. Molisch's test is named after him, it is a sensitive chemical test for the presence of carbohydrates. He taught as a professor at the German University of Prague , Vienna University , Tohoku Imperial University , and the Bose Institute in Kolkata India;1928-
Go to Profile#18886
Bertram Whittier Wells
1884 - 1978 (94 years)
Bertram Whittier Wells was an American botanist and ecologist active in North Carolina. His most influential work was Natural Gardens of North Carolina . During his long and active life, B. W. Wells was keenly interested in the study and preservation of North Carolina's unique landscape. He spent time studying the Big Savannah in North Carolina's Pender County, a spot he made famous in his publications on "natural gardens." Wells also, unsuccessfully, worked to save the Big Savannah from development. In 2002, a similar ecological site was dedicated to Wells's memory. Wells's concern for th...
Go to Profile#18887
Harald Lindberg
1871 - 1963 (92 years)
Harald Lindberg was a Finnish botanist of Swedish parentage. He was the son of botanist Sextus Otto Lindberg . He studied natural sciences at the University of Helsinki, later spending several years working as a secondary school teacher. In 1910 he obtained his PhD at Helsinki with a dissertation on Alchemilla vulgaris. Afterwards, he served as first custodian at the botanical museum in Helsinki, where he remained until his retirement in 1941.
Go to Profile#18888
Cesare T. Lombroso
#18889
Harry Luman Russell
1866 - 1954 (88 years)
Harry Luman Russell was an American bacteriologist and educator. Biography Rusell was born in Poynette, Wisconsin, the son of country doctor E. Fred Russell and his wife Lucinda E. Waldron, he attended Poynette High School before matriculating to the University of Wisconsin in 1884. Following his graduation with a B.S in 1888, he undertook graduate studies in Biology and received his M.S. in 1890. He went to Europe for further study under Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur; first at the University of Berlin, then at the Zoological Station in Naples, and finally at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Returning to the U.S., he attended Johns Hopkins University, where he was awarded a Ph.D.
Go to Profile#18890
Robert Almer Harper
1862 - 1946 (84 years)
Robert Almer Harper was an American botanist. The younger brother of Edward Thompson Harper, Robert was born in Le Claire, Iowa to Congressional Minister Almer Harper and Eunice Thompson. The family moved to Port Byron, Illinois in 1863, where Robert attended local schools. He matriculated to Oberlin College, his father's alma mater, where he graduated with a A. B. in 1886. During the Fall of 1886 he performed graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, then he was professor of Greek and Latin at Gates College in Neligh, Nebraska during 1886–88.
Go to Profile#18891
Ethel Ronzoni Bishop
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Ethel Ronzoni Bishop was an American biochemist and physiologist. Early life and education Ethel Ronzoni was born in California. She earned her BS degree from Mills College in 1913, her Master's from Columbia University in 1914, and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1923.
Go to Profile#18892
Malcolm Laurie
1866 - 1932 (66 years)
Malcolm Laurie FRSE FLS was a Scottish zoologist and palaeontologist. Biography He was born in Brunstane House south of Portobello, Edinburgh on 27 February 1866, the son of Catherine Ann Hibburd and her husband Simon Somerville Laurie. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy 1876 to 1880. He studied science, first at the University of Edinburgh then at the University of Cambridge where he graduated with a BA in 1889. He returned to Edinburgh for postgraduate studies and gained his doctorate in 1894.
Go to Profile#18893
Malcolm Wilson
1882 - 1960 (78 years)
Malcolm Wilson FRSE FLS was a 20th-century Scottish botanist and mycologist. He was an expert on the identification of dry rot and its remediation. Life Wilson studied science at the University of London, graduating with a BSc in 1905. In 1909 he became Senior Demonstrator in Botany at Imperial College, London. He gained a doctorate in 1911. He was created a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1910.
Go to Profile#18894
Fredric Wertham
1895 - 1981 (86 years)
Fredric Wertham was a German-American psychiatrist and author. Wertham had an early reputation as a progressive psychiatrist who treated poor black patients at his Lafargue Clinic at a time of heightened discrimination in urban mental health practice. Wertham also authored a definitive textbook on the brain, and his institutional stressor findings were cited when courts overturned multiple segregation statutes, most notably in Brown v. Board of Education.
Go to Profile#18895
Myron L. Bender
1924 - 1988 (64 years)
Myron Lee Bender was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He obtained his B.S. and his Ph.D. from Purdue University. The latter was under the direction of Henry B. Hass. After postdoctoral research under Paul D. Barlett , and Frank H. Westheimer , he spent one year as a faculty member at the University of Connecticut. Thereafter, he was a professor of Chemistry at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1951, and then at Northwestern University in 1960. He worked primarily in the study of reaction mechanisms and the biochemistry of enzyme action. Myron L. Bender demonstrated the two-step mechanism of...
Go to Profile#18896
Eduard Reichenow
1883 - 1960 (77 years)
Johann Eduard Reichenow was a German protozoologist. He was the son of ornithologist Anton Reichenow. Biography Reichenow was born in Berlin. He studied natural sciences in Heidelberg, Berlin and Munich, and received his doctorate in 1908. After graduation he conducted research of protozoans at the Imperial Health Ministry in Berlin. From 1913 onward, he served as a government zoologist in Kamerun, where he did studies on the biology of the malaria pathogen. From 1916 to 1919 he conducted research at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, and in 1921 was appointed director of the protozoology department at the Schiffs- und Tropenkrankheiten in Hamburg.
Go to Profile#18897
Giulio Cesare Casseri
1552 - 1616 (64 years)
Giulio Cesare Casseri , also written as Giulio Casser, Giulio Casserio of Piacenza or Latinized as Iulius Casserius Placentinus, Giulio Casserio, was an Italian anatomist. He is best known for the books Tabulae anatomicae and De Vocis Auditusque Organis . He was the first to describe the Circle of Willis.
Go to Profile#18898
Domingo Castillejo
1744 - 1786 (42 years)
Domingo Castillejo or Castillejos was a Spanish botanist, surgeon, and professor. From 1770 to 1786, he served as a professor of materia medica and botany at the Royal Naval College of Surgery in Cádiz, during which time his studies were devoted to the flora of the southern Iberian Peninsula. Among the many positions he held during this time was Cádiz correspondent for the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid; in this position he received many new plants imported from the New World, and acclimatized them for distribution to other nurseries throughout Spain and the Canary Islands.
Go to Profile#18899
Jan Tur
1875 - 1942 (67 years)
Jan Feliks Tur was a Polish zoologist who specialized in embryology, mutagenesis, and teratology at the University of Warsaw. His family belonged to the Korczak clan of nobles. Tur was born at Radziwiliszki near Grażun to landowner Jarosław Daniel and Maria née Rymkiewicz. After schooling in Vilnius and Częstochowa, he studied zoology at the Warsaw Imperial University under Pavel Mitrofanov and became his assistant in 1899. After receiving a doctorate from the Jagiellonian University on avian teratology under Józef Nusbaum-Hilarowicz he went on internships to Villefranche, Roscoff, Saratov, Vimereux and Heligoland.
Go to Profile#18900
Tatiana Krasnoselskaia
1884 - 1950 (66 years)
Tatiana Krasnoselskaia was a botanist specializing in plant physiology from the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union. Life Tatiana Abramovna Krasnoselskaia was born on 1 January 1884 in St Petersburg, capital of the Russian Empire. She studied physics and mathematics in the Bestuzhev Courses, graduating in 1904. She was an assistant professor at the St Petersburg Agricultural Courses and then became an assistant professor at the Bestuzhev Courses from 1909 to 1914. While teaching Krasnoselskaia earned her M.A. at Saint Petersburg Imperial University in 1912. Two years later she moved to...
Go to Profile