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,
#19051
Takenoshin Nakai
1882 - 1952 (70 years)
Takenoshin Nakai was a Japanese botanist. In 1919 and 1930 he published papers on the plants of Japan and Korea, including the genus Cephalotaxus. During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies Takenoshin Nakai was between 1943 and 1945 the director of 's Lands Plantentuin in Batavia
Go to Profile#19052
Richard Heymons
1867 - 1943 (76 years)
Richard Heymons was a German zoologist and entomologist. He studied in Humboldt University of Berlin from 1886 to 1891 and provided overall direction of the Institute of Zoology at the higher educational farm in Berlin from 1915 to 1935.
Go to Profile#19053
Jagadish Chandra Bose
1858 - 1937 (79 years)
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was a polymath with interests in biology, physics, botany and writing science fiction. He was a pioneer in the investigation of radio microwave optics, made significant contributions to botany, and was a major force behind the expansion of experimental science on the Indian subcontinent. Bose is considered the father of Bengali science fiction. He invented the crescograph, a device for measuring the growth of plants. A crater on the Moon was named in his honour. He founded the Bose Institute, a premier research institute in India and also one of its oldest. Established in 1917, the institute was the first interdisciplinary research centre in Asia.
Go to Profile#19054
Jacob R. Schramm
1885 - 1976 (91 years)
Jacob Richard Schramm was an American botanist. He was Professor of Botany and director of the Morris Arboretum at the University of Pennsylvania, and previously taught at Washington University in St. Louis and Cornell. Following his retirement from Pennsylvania he was appointed Research Scholar of Botany at Indiana University. He helped found the abstracting journal Botanical Abstracts, and served as editor-in-chief of it and of its successor, Biological Abstracts. He served as vice-president and president of the Botanical Society of America and as vice-president of the American Philosophi...
Go to Profile#19055
Kiichi Miyake
1876 - 1964 (88 years)
was a Japanese botanist and professor at the University of Tokyo. His research focus was bryology and pteridology. His undergraduate studies were at Doshisha University and the University of Tokyo. His graduated studies were at Cornell University, where he received his MA in 1901 and PhD in 1902. After finishing his PhD, Miyake was appointed by the government of Taiwan to travel to Europe and perform a two-year study of plant life there.
Go to Profile#19056
Drummond Rennie
Drummond Rennie is an American nephrologist and high altitude physiologist who is a contributing deputy editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association and an adjunct professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
Go to Profile#19057
Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner
1871 - 1935 (64 years)
Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner was a Jewish bacteriologist and physician, known for her research on tuberculosis and public health. She was the second woman to become a Professor in Prussia. Biography Lydia Rabinowitsch was born at Kovno, Russian Empire . She was educated at the girls' gymnasium of her native city, and privately in Latin and Greek, subsequently studying natural sciences at the universities of Zurich and Bern . After graduation she went to Berlin, where Professor Robert Koch permitted her to pursue her bacteriological studies at the Institute for Infectious Diseases. She became t...
Go to Profile#19058
Hazel Branch
1886 - 1973 (87 years)
Hazel Elizabeth Branch was an American entomologist. Branch was affiliated with the American Society of Zoologists and the Academy for the Advancement of Science. Branch was also the president of the Kansas Academy of Science.
Go to Profile#19059
Étienne Rabaud
1868 - 1956 (88 years)
Étienne Antoine Prosper Jules Rabaud was a French zoologist, known for his studies of animal behavior. From 1894 he served as an assistant in the laboratory of teratology at the École des Hautes-Études, and in 1898 he obtained doctorates in both medicine and sciences. In 1907 he became a maître de conférences at the faculty of sciences in Paris, where he was later named an assistant professor , professor without chair and a professor of experimental biology . From 1910 to 1919 he served as director of the laboratory at Wimereux.
Go to Profile#19060
Ruby Hirose
1904 - 1960 (56 years)
Ruby Sakae Hirose was an American biochemist and bacteriologist. She did research on blood clotting and thrombin, allergies, and researched cancer using antimetabolites. Family and early life Ruby Hirose was born to Shiusaka Hirose and Tome in Kent, Washington, on August 30, 1904. She was the second child of seven children in the family, but because the first child died very young, grew up as the oldest child of six in the family. She had four sisters and one brother, and they lived in the White River area around Seattle. The second child in the family was Fumiko, two years younger than Ruby.
Go to Profile#19061
Edwin Van Dyke
1869 - 1952 (83 years)
Edwin Cooper Van Dyke was an American physician and entomologist. A leading authority on beetles of the Pacific Coast of North America, he was also an expert on insect pests of forests and forest products. He became a professor of entomology at the University of California, Berkeley and worked on the curatorial staff at the California Academy of Sciences for almost fifty years.
Go to Profile#19062
Olive Griffith Stull
1905 - 1969 (64 years)
Olive Griffith Stull was an American herpetologist. Stull was born in Rochester, New York. She married Loy Davis in 1930, one year after completing her degree at the University of Michigan. She worked in the field of veterinary medicine and contributed to research in a variety of fields. Her appointments included fellowships at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology and at her alma mater, where she was a student of Alexander Grant Ruthven. She published an important revision of the colubrid snake genus Pituophis, and is the author of the species Pituophis ruthveni whose name honours her professor at Michigan.
Go to Profile#19063
Boris Uvarov
1886 - 1970 (84 years)
Sir Boris Petrovitch Uvarov was a Russian-British entomologist best known for his work on the biology and ecology of locusts. He has been called the father of acridology. Biography Boris Petrovitch Uvarov was born in Ural'sk, in the Russian Empire , the youngest of three sons of Pyotr P. Uvarov, a state bank employee, and his wife, Aleksandra. His interest in natural history was aided in young life by his father's gift of six volumes of Brehm's Tierleben. He went to a school in Uralsk from 1895 to 1902 where he was encouraged by S. M. Zhuravlev. He then studied briefly at the School of Minin...
Go to Profile#19064
Constantin Andreas von Regel
1890 - 1970 (80 years)
Constantin Andreas von Regel was a Russian and Lithuanian horticulturalist and botanist. He was a grandson of Eduard August von Regel. In 1922 he was named head of the department of botany at the Kaunas University. During the following year he became director of the newly established botanical garden at Kaunas. He was the author of approximately 150 scientific books and articles, including significant works in the fields of geobotany and phytogeography.
Go to Profile#19065
Johannes Boye Petersen
1887 - 1961 (74 years)
Johannes Boye Petersen was a Danish botanist and phycologist, mainly working on diatoms. Selected scientific works Studies on the Biology and Taxonomy of Soil Algae. Dansk Botanisk Arkiv vol. 8 : 1–183. 1935.The fresh-water Cyanophyceæ of Iceland. The Botany of Iceland, edited by L. Kolderup Rosenvinge & E. Warming, J. Frimodt, Copenhagen, and John Wheldon and Co., London; Vol. 1, Part 2, pp. 251–324. 1928.The aerial algæ of Iceland. The Botany of Iceland, edited by L. Kolderup Rosenvinge & E. Warming, J. Frimodt, Copenhagen, and John Wheldon and Co., London; Vol. 1, Part 2, pp. 325–447. 1928.JBP & Hansen, Benth J.
Go to Profile#19066
Kiril Bratanov
1911 - 1986 (75 years)
Kiril Tsochev Bratanov was a prominent Bulgarian biologist and pioneer in the area of immunology of reproduction. Education and early life Kiril Bratanov was born on March 5, 1911, in the town of Lukovit, Bulgaria as the third son of Tsocho Bratanov Radkinski, a teacher from Yablanitsa. His oldest brother, Professor Bratan Bratanov, studied medicine and became one of the most prominent Bulgarian pediatricians of his time. His other brother, Dimitar Bratanov, studied law and served as diplomat, ambassador, and Member of the Bulgarian National Assembly. Due to his political convictions as a mem...
Go to Profile#19067
Erich Wagler
1884 - 1951 (67 years)
Erich Wagler was a German ichthyologist and malacologist. He studied natural sciences in Leipzig and Jena, obtaining his doctorate in zoology at Leipzig in 1912. From 1920 to 1926 he worked as a privat-docent, afterwards serving as a "non-scheduled associate professor" at the University of Leipzig.
Go to Profile#19068
George Leslie Purser
1891 - 1967 (76 years)
George Leslie Purser FRSE was a 20th-century English zoologist and embryologist. Life He was born in the Moseley district of Birmingham on 23 December 1891 the son of Harriet Annie Purser and her husband, George Jesse Purser .
Go to Profile#19069
Otto Zdansky
1894 - 1988 (94 years)
Otto Karl Josef Zdansky was an Austrian paleontologist. Biography He graduated from the Philosophical School at the University of Vienna in Paleontology on 21 March 1921, with the academic degree 'Dr. phil.' .
Go to Profile#19070
Yuri Filipchenko
1882 - 1930 (48 years)
Yuri Aleksandrovich Filipchenko was a Russian entomologist who coined the terms microevolution and macroevolution, as well as the mentor of geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky. Though he himself was an orthogeneticist, he was one of the first scientists to incorporate the laws of Mendel into evolutionary theory and thus had a great influence on The Modern Synthesis. He established a genetics laboratory in Leningrad undertaking experimental work with Drosophila melanogaster. Theodosius Dobzhansky worked with him from 1924. Filipchenko is also known for his work in Soviet eugenics, though his work...
Go to Profile#19071
Gwynneth Vaughan Buchanan
1886 - 1945 (59 years)
Gwynneth Vaughan Buchanan was an Australian zoologist. She is best known for her work on animal morphology, culminating in the book Elements of Animal Morphology. She was a lecturer, and then a senior lecturer, at the University of Melbourne from 1921 to 1944.
Go to Profile#19072
Alexander Fleming
1881 - 1955 (74 years)
Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin. His discovery in 1928 of what was later named benzylpenicillin from the mould Penicillium rubens has been described as the "single greatest victory ever achieved over disease". For this discovery, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain.
Go to Profile#19073
Helen Redfield
1900 - 1988 (88 years)
Helen Redfield , was an American geneticist. Redfield graduated from Rice University in 1920, followed by earning her Ph.D. in zoology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1921. While at Rice, she worked in the mathematics department. She joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1925 and that same year she became a National Research Fellow at Columbia University. In 1926 she married Jack Schultz, the couple had two children. Redfield retained her maiden name upon her marriage. In 1929 she worked as a teaching fellow at New York University. Ten years later she worked as a geneticist in the Kerckhoff Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#19074
Nils Hylander
1904 - 1970 (66 years)
Nils Hylander was a Swedish botanist and mycologist. From November 1953 to his death he was curator of the Uppsala University Botanical Garden. He was appointed professor in 1967. Career Hylander received his doctorate in botany at Uppsala University in June 1943. His thesis “Die Grassameneinkömmlinge Schwedischer Parke, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Hieracia silvaticiformia.”, deals with the plants that were introduced into Swedish parks and larger gardens in the late 1800s via foreign grass seed, including about 140 different subspecies of hawkweed . One of the objectives was to use ...
Go to Profile#19075
Alex Rogers
Alex D. Rogers is professor of conservation biology and fellow of Somerville College, University of Oxford. External links Alex Rogers talking at the World Economic Forum on Preserving Ocean Ecosystems.
Go to Profile#19076
Ferdinand Broili
1874 - 1946 (72 years)
Ferdinand Broili was a German paleontologist. He studied natural sciences at the universities of Würzburg and Munich, where his influences were Karl von Zittel and August Rothpletz. In 1899 he received his doctorate from Munich with a dissertation on Eryops megacephalus, titled Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis von Eryops megacephalus. In 1903 he obtained his habilitation, and in 1908 became an associate professor at the university. In 1919 he was appointed director of the Staatssammlung fur Palaontologie und historische Geologie in Munich.
Go to Profile#19077
Albert Thellung
1881 - 1928 (47 years)
Albert Thellung was a Swiss botanist. He was a professor at the University of Zürich. The Austrian botanist Otto Stapf named the plant genus Thellungia of the grass family, Poaceae, after him, and Otto Eugen Schulz named the genus Thellungiella in his honor.
Go to Profile#19078
Einar Langfeldt
1884 - 1966 (82 years)
Einar Langfeldt was a Norwegian physician. He was born in Kristiansand, and was a brother of Gabriel Langfeldt. He was appointed professor at the University of Oslo from 1925. Among his works is his thesis The partial pancreatectomy, and Lærebok i fysiologisk og medisinsk kjemi from 1928.
Go to Profile#19079
Lottlisa Behling
1909 - 1989 (80 years)
Lottlisa Behling was a German art historian and botanist. Biography Lottlisa Behling was born on 15 July 1909 in Neustettin, Pomerania. She was a double major in art history and botany at the universities of Greifswald, Halle and Berlin. She received her doctorate degree 1937 in Berlin. Her doctoral thesis was titled Das ungegenständliche Bauornament der Gotik. Versuch einer Geschichte des Maßwerks.
Go to Profile#19080
Johannes Hermanus van der Hoop
1887 - 1950 (63 years)
Johannes Hermanus van der Hoop was a Dutch psychiatrist, Van der Hoop underwent analysis with both Carl Jung and Ruth Mack Brunswick. He was a co-founder and president of the Dutch Association for Psychotherapy. In 1929 van der Hoop was given a private lectureship in the theory of neuroses at the University of Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#19081
Marion Fyfe
1897 - 1986 (89 years)
Marion Liddell Fyfe was a New Zealand academic, specialising in taxonomy of planarians and other flatworms, the first woman zoology lecturer at the University of Otago, and the first woman to be elected to the Council of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
Go to Profile#19082
Hans Bluntschli
1877 - 1962 (85 years)
Hans Bluntschli was a Swiss anatomist. He was born in Frankfurt and died in Bern. Education and career In 1881, his father, who was an architect, moved the family to Zurich. From 1887 he attended the grammar school in Winterthur. The botanist Robert Keller was a teacher there and exerted a great influence on the young Bluntschli, as Bluntschli himself often emphasized in later years. Keller had studied in Jena and was a big fan of Ernst Haeckel's zoological and embryological theories. He received his medical degree from Heidelberg University in 1903, and taught at multiple universities befo...
Go to Profile#19083
Eberhard Fraas
1862 - 1915 (53 years)
Eberhard Fraas was a German scientist, geologist and paleontologist. He worked as a curator at the Stuttgarter Naturaliensammlung and discovered the dinosaurs of the Tendaguru formation in then German East Africa . The dinosaur Efraasia is named after him.
Go to Profile#19084
Gualterio Looser
1898 - 1982 (84 years)
Gualterio Looser Schallemberg was a Chilean botanist and engineer of Swiss parentage. He owned a factory that made agricultural implements. In 1928 Looser joined the American Fern Society, and started to publish papers on the pteridophytes of Chile. His herbarium containing ca. 8000 specimens was given to Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève.
Go to Profile#19085
Max Westenhöfer
1871 - 1957 (86 years)
Max Westenhöfer was a German pathologist and biologist who contributed to the development of the anatomic pathology and the reform of public health in Chile. Education Maximilian Joseph Johann Westenhöfer was born on February 9, 1871, in Ansbach, Bavaria. His father was a school teacher called Johan Karl Westenhöffer, but the son later simplified the spelling of his surname. His mother's maiden name was Knell, and in later years her name was sometimes appended to his according to the Spanish naming custom. making his name Max Westenhöfer Knell.
Go to Profile#19086
Luis Howell-Rivero
1906 - 1986 (80 years)
Luis Hugo Howell-Rivero was a Cuban biologist and anthropologist. In the 1920s and 1930s he identified numerous new species of animals, especially fish, in Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean. One example is Squalus cubensis, the Cuban dogfish. He helped establish institutions for the study of biology and botany throughout Central and South America and later in life became an expert for UNESCO.
Go to Profile#19087
Ivar Tidestrom
1864 - 1956 (92 years)
Ivar Frederick Tidestrom was a Swedish-American botanist. He is best known for his volumes on the flora of the American Southwest. Early life Tidestrom was born on his father's estate "Lanna" in Hidinge parish in Närke, near modern Vintrosa, the third of five children of Constantin Tideström and his wife Brita Ulrika Wallmo . His father operated a lime kiln and a stone quarry on the property. Tidestrom's early schooling was in nearby Örebro. In 1880 or 1881 he ran away to America, landing in New York where his luggage was stolen. Tidestrom enlisted in the United States 8th Cavalry, serving ...
Go to Profile#19088
Teodor Lippmaa
1892 - 1943 (51 years)
Teodor Lippmaa was a noted Estonian botanist. He was the president of the Estonian Naturalists' Society in 1939–1942. There is a monument honoring him in Tartu where he lived for much of his life. It was erected in 1982.
Go to Profile#19089
Leonhard Schultze-Jena
1872 - 1955 (83 years)
Leonhard Sigmund Friedrich Kuno Klaus Schultze-Jena was a German explorer, zoologist, and anthropologist known for his explorations of German Southwest Africa and New Guinea, as well as for his studies on Mesoamerican languages. During the Herero and Namaqua genocide, Schultze, a witness, took "body parts from fresh native corpses" which according to him was a "welcome addition". He also noted that he could use prisoners for that purpose.
Go to Profile#19090
Friedrich Steinbacher
1877 - 1938 (61 years)
Friedrich Christian Steinbacher was a German mathematician, high-school teacher, natural scientist and ornithologist. He helped Ernst Hartert produce a comprehensive work on the palearctic bird fauna, Die Vögel der paläarktischen Fauna and continued to edit it after Hartert's death from 1933 to 1938. He was the father of Georg and uncle of Joachim Steinbacher who also became ornithologists.
Go to Profile#19091
Frank Mace MacFarland
1869 - 1951 (82 years)
Frank Mace MacFarland was an American malacologist associated with Stanford University in California. Born in Centralia, Illinois, MacFarland attended DePauw University , Stanford University and the University of Wurzburg . On August 27, 1902, MacFarland married Olive Knowles Hornbrook . Mrs. MacFarland was a skilled technician and artist whose delicate watercolor paintings illustrated many of his scientific publications.
Go to Profile#19092
Egbertus van Slogteren
1888 - 1968 (80 years)
Egbertus "Egbert" van Slogteren was a Dutch professor of horticulture and phytopathology, known for his research on flower bulbs and diagnosis of viral diseases in plants. Biography Egbert van Slogteren grew up in Groningen. After graduating from the Groningen Gymnasium in 1907, he studied botany and zoology at the University of Groningen, where he graduated in 1911. From 1911 to 1915 he worked as an assistant to Professor Jan Willem Moll, who became his doctoral advisor. In 1917 Van Slogteren obtained from the University of Groningen his doctorate degree cum laude with dissertation De gasbew...
Go to Profile#19093
Margaret Blackwood
1909 - 1986 (77 years)
Dame Margaret Blackwood was an Australian botanist and geneticist. She attended the University of Melbourne and lectured there for the majority of her career, becoming deputy chancellor after her academic retirement. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1981 and was inducted posthumously into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.
Go to Profile#19094
Henning Eiler Petersen
1877 - 1946 (69 years)
Henning Eiler Petersen was a Danish mycologist, botanist and marine biologist. He made a major contribution to unveiling the mysterious die-back of eel grass in Northern European waters in the early 20th century as a pathogen outbreak.
Go to Profile#19095
Yi Li Keng
1898 - 1975 (77 years)
Yi-Li Keng was a Chinese botanist, specializing in the study of grasses , particularly the tribe Triticeae of the Poaceae. Yi-Li Keng graduated in 1927 with B.Sc. from Nanjing University . After graduation, he collected plants in Zhejiang Province with Hsen-Hsu Hu and Sung-Shu Chien. At George Washington University Keng graduated with A.M. in 1932 and Ph.D. in 1933.
Go to Profile#19096
Gunnar Säve-Söderbergh
1910 - 1948 (38 years)
Gunnar Säve-Söderbergh was a Swedish palaeontologist and geologist. Säve-Söderbergh was born at Falun, the son of the neurologist Gotthard Söderbergh and Inga Säve. He passed his G.C.E. at Gothenburg in 1928 and took bachelor's and licentiate's degrees at Uppsala University in 1931 and 1933, respectively. He was appointed professor of geology, historical geology in particular, at Uppsala in 1937.
Go to Profile#19097
Mignon Talbot
1869 - 1950 (81 years)
Mignon Talbot was an American paleontologist. Talbot recovered and named the only known fossils of the dinosaur Podokesaurus holyokensis, which were found near Mount Holyoke College in 1910, and published a scientific description of the specimen in 1911. In 1909 she became the first woman elected to be a member of the Paleontological Society. In the state of New York, she contributed to the Helderbergian crinoids and studied the faunas of Stafford limestone.
Go to Profile#19098
João Moojen
1904 - 1985 (81 years)
João Moojen de Oliveira was a zoologist dedicated to the systematics of Brazilian mammals, particularly rodents and primates. He was also interested in birds. He collected extensively between the 1930s and 50s and wrote "Os Roedores do Brasil" in 1952, a key book on Brazilian rodents. He was an authority on spiny rats of the genus Phyllomys. As well as performing research, Moojen worked significantly as a teacher and technical advisor; positions held include: head of the Biology Department of Escola Superior de Agricultura e Veterinária do Estado de Minas Gerais, in Viçosa; Professor-Head of...
Go to Profile#19099
Cornelis Andries Backer
1874 - 1963 (89 years)
Cornelis Andries Backer was a Dutch botanist and pteridologist. He was born on 18 September 1874 in Oudenbosch and died on 22 February 1963 at Heemstede, The Netherlands. He stayed thirty years in the Dutch East Indies and did research on plant taxonomy on the islands of Java and Madura.
Go to Profile#19100
Eric D'Ath
1897 - 1979 (82 years)
Eric Frederick D'Ath was a New Zealand pathologist, and was professor of pathology and medical jurisprudence at the University of Otago from 1929 until 1962. In the 1965 Queen's Birthday Honours, D'Ath was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, in recognition of his services as professor of pathology and medical jurisprudence at the University of Otago. In 1975, he was conferred an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Otago.
Go to Profile