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,
#19101
Norah Lillian Penston
1903 - 1974 (71 years)
Norah Lillian Penston was a British botanist and academic administrator. She was principal of Bedford College, University of London, from 1951 to 1964. Early life and education Nora Penston was the daughter of A. J. Penston. She was educated at the Bolton School and St Anne's College, Oxford where she obtained a BA in botany in 1927. She studied under W. O. James, researching the potassium nutrition of potatoes for her DPhil, which she gained in 1930.
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W. Anthony Mason
#19103
Joseph Swain
1857 - 1927 (70 years)
Joseph Swain served as the ninth president of Indiana University and also as the sixth president of Swarthmore College. Summary Education Indiana University Wabash College Career Professor of mathematics and biology at Indiana University Professor of mathematics at Stanford University President of Indiana University President of Swarthmore College
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Joseph Schröter
1837 - 1894 (57 years)
Joseph Schröter was a noted German mycologist, doctor and scientist. He wrote several books and texts, and discovered and described many species of flora and fungi. He also spent around fifteen years, from 1871 to 1886, as a military doctor, particularly in the Franco-Prussian War, in places such as Spandau, Rastatt and Breslau, and rising to the rank of colonel.
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Peter Fredrik Wahlberg
1800 - 1877 (77 years)
Peter Fredrik Wahlberg was a Swedish entomologist and professor at the University College of Stockholm. Wahlberg was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences from 1830, and served as the academy's secretary from 1848 to 1866.
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Heinrich Wilhelm von Pabst
1798 - 1868 (70 years)
Heinrich Wilhelm von Pabst was a German agriculturalist. In his teens, he served as an agricultural apprentice on the estates of Freiherrn von Riedesel, and afterwards, spent a few years engaged in study trips throughout Germany. In 1823 he became a teacher and accountant at the agricultural academy of Hohenheim. In 1831 he received the title of Ökonomierat and was named perennial secretary of agricultural organizations in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. Subsequently, he opened an agricultural school in Kranichstein, near Darmstadt.
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Alexander Bukirev
1903 - 1964 (61 years)
Alexander Ilyich Bukirev was a Soviet ichthyologist, professor, rector , the Dean of the Faculty of Biology of Perm State University. He founded a scientific direction in ichthyology that studied fish resources, fish variability, and patterns of formation of the fish fauna of the Kama reservoir.
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Louis Alexandre Auguste Chevrolat
1799 - 1884 (85 years)
Louis Alexandre Auguste Chevrolat was a French entomologist, born 29 March 1799 in Paris and died 16 December 1884 in Paris. In government service in Paris, this amateur entomologist studied mainly beetles and birds. He published nearly 250 notes and papers and was the author of more than 2,000 species. He was one of the founders of the Société entomologique de France in 1832. On his death, his collection was dispersed. Part of his collection is now in the Natural History Museum in London along with some manuscripts.
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Vladimir Wagner
1849 - 1934 (85 years)
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Wagner was a Russian psychologist and naturalist known for his studies of comparative and evolutionary psychology. He also studied spiders, and in 1882 proposed the first classification of spider families based on copulatory organs.
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Friedrich Blochmann
1858 - 1931 (73 years)
Friedrich Johann Wilhelm Blochmann was a German zoologist. He was a son-in-law to historian Eduard Winkelmann . He studied at the technical school in Karlsruhe and at the University of Heidelberg, where he was a student of Otto Bütschli. In 1885 he obtained his habilitation and in 1888 became an associate professor. In 1891 he succeeded Maximilian Braun as professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the University of Rostock. In 1898 he relocated as a professor to the University of Tübingen.
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Otto von Münchhausen
1716 - 1774 (58 years)
Otto II. Freiherr von Münchhausen was a German botanist. He was Chancellor of University of Göttingen and a correspondent of Linnaeus. He named several species of oaks by the Linnean system, as well as other plants.
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Mary C. Lobban
1922 - 1982 (60 years)
Mary Constance Cecile Lobban was a British physiologist who studied circadian rhythms. Lobban was a Senior Demonstrator in Physiology in the Physiological Laboratory at the University of Cambridge from 1955 to 1959. From 1959 to 1974 she worked at the National Institute for Medical Research's Hampstead laboratories.
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Thomas Prof. Dr. Schwarz
#19114
Sievert Allen Rohwer
1887 - 1951 (64 years)
Sievert Allen Rohwer was an American entomologist who specialized in Hymenoptera. He was a graduate of the University of Colorado. At the time of his death, Rohwer was serving as the Coordinator Defense Activities for the Agricultural Research Administration within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Rohwer worked for the USDA from 1909 until his death.
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George Karl Ludwig Sigwart
1784 - 1864 (80 years)
George Karl Ludwig Sigwart was a German biochemist, botanist and physician. Early life Sigwart was born in Tübingen in 1784 into a medical family; his grandfather Georg Friedrich Sigwart had been the personal physician of Charles Eugene, Duke of Württemberg. Between 1800 and 1806 he studied medicine, physics, chemistry and botany at the local university and received a doctoral degree in 1808. During the same year, he received a grant allowing him to be transferred to Munich where he worked for the Journal of Chemistry, Physics and Medicine. Soon afterwards he was appointed to the University o...
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Vincent Bochdalek
1801 - 1883 (82 years)
Vincent Alexander Bochdalek was a Bohemian anatomist and pathologist. His first name has also been given as Vincenc and Vincenz. Bochdalek was elected as member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
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William Z. Hassid
1899 - 1974 (75 years)
William Zev Hassid was a pioneer research scientist in sugar biochemistry, who announced the synthesis of sucrose in 1944. He received the Sugar Research Award of the National Academy of Sciences for this discovery in 1945. He also received the Charles Reid Barnes Honorary Life Membership Award of the American Society of Plant Physiologists , and the C. S. Hudson Award of the American Chemical Society . In 1972 he was recognized the Sixth International Symposium on Carbohydrate Chemistry as one of three outstanding senior American carbohydrate chemists. Hassid served as a member of the Nati...
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Margaret Loewy Kirby
#19119
Franklin Hooper
1851 - 1914 (63 years)
Franklin William Hooper, LL.D. was an American biologist, geologist, educator and institute director. Life and work He was born in Walpole, New Hampshire, the son of William Hooper and Elvira Pulsifer Hopper, and grew up on his parents' farm. After local schooling he studied at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, from 1867–1871, and in 1872 enrolled at Harvard University to study biological sciences, where Louis Agassiz and Asa Gray were among his professors. He participated in the first biological summer school at the short-lived Anderson School of Natural History, founded by Agassiz in 1873 on Penikese Island, Cape Cod.
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J. M. T. Hamilton‐miller
#19121
Gabriel Steiner
1883 - 1965 (82 years)
Gabriel Steiner was a German-American neurologist known for his research of multiple sclerosis. In his studies, he postulated a link between multiple sclerosis and certain forms of spirochetes. Of Jewish ancestry, he studied medicine at the universities of Munich, Würzburg, Freiburg and Strasbourg, receiving his doctorate at the latter university in 1910. In 1913 he qualified as a lecturer in neurology and psychiatry, and from 1920, worked as an associate professor at the University of Heidelberg. Here, he was also head of the laboratory for pathological anatomy at the psychiatric-neurologica...
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Robert Wallace
1853 - 1939 (86 years)
Robert Wallace was Scottish professor of agriculture who worked at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester and at the University of Edinburgh where he helped establish agricultural education. He travelled around the British colonies, examining agriculture and livestock husbandry, and wrote numerous books and contributed several entries related to farming for the 11th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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Oskar Zoth
1864 - 1933 (69 years)
Oskar Karl Maria Zoth was an Austrian physiologist. In 1888 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Graz, where in 1896 he qualified as a lecturer for physiology. In 1898 he became an associate professor, and three years later, was a named a full professor at the University of Innsbruck. In 1904 he returned as a professor to the University of Graz. In 1900 he was a recipient of the Lieben Prize.
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Rudolf Robert Maier
1824 - 1888 (64 years)
Rudolf Robert Maier was a German pathologist who was a native of Freiburg im Breisgau. He studied medicine at the University of Freiburg, where one of his instructors was orthopedist Louis Stromeyer . He furthered his medical training in Vienna with Carl Rokitansky , Joseph Hyrtl and Josef Skoda , and in Würzburg under Rudolf Virchow . Afterwards, he returned to Freiburg, where in 1859 he became an associate professor. He later attained a full professorship, and in 1864 founded the first institute of pathological anatomy at Freiburg.
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Theodore H. Fleming
#19126
Bjørn Føyn
1898 - 1985 (87 years)
Bjørn Føyn was a Norwegian zoologist, especially known for researching the genetics of algae. He was born in Trondhjem as a son of educator and major Anton Christian Føyn and Olga Barth Nielsen . He finished his secondary education at Trondhjem Cathedral School in 1918, and graduated from the Royal Frederick University with the cand.real. degree in 1927. He was a research assistant from 1923 to 1928 at the Royal Frederick University, and then under Max Hartmann at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Biologie from 1929 to 1932. He was also a research fellow in Norway during this period, and from 1932 to 1937 he worked in Bergen.
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Eugen Bostroem
1850 - 1928 (78 years)
Eugen Woldemar Bostroem was a Baltic German pathologist. He was born in Fellin , in the Livonian Governorate of the Russian Empire . He studied medicine at the universities of Leipzig and Erlangen, receiving his degree in 1876. Afterwards he was an assistant to Friedrich Albert von Zenker at the pathology institute in Erlangen. From 1883 to 1926 he was a professor of general pathology and pathological anatomy in Gießen.
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Francesco Puccinotti
1794 - 1872 (78 years)
Francesco Puccinotti was an Italian pathologist. Puccinotti was born in Urbino and started his career as the main doctor in Recanati but moved on to Macerata where he became the director of the civil hospital. He went on to teach the history of medicine at the universities of Pisa and Florence. He was briefly named to the Italian Senate after the Risorgimento.
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Theo Holm
1854 - 1932 (78 years)
Herman Theodor Holm was a Danish-American systematic botanist, agriculturalist and plant pathologist. His works dealt principally with plants from the Arctic and from the Rocky Mountains, mainly taxonomy and morphology. He published over 150 papers reflecting his research which included his series Studies on the Cyperaceae and Medicinal Plants of North America.
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Ralph Merrill Caldwell
1903 - 1976 (73 years)
Ralph Merrill Caldwell was an American plant breeder, mycologist, and plant pathologist. Through his work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Purdue University, he developed disease-resistant cultivars for a wide variety of plants, including widely-grown wheat cultivars.
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John Hardie Wilson
1858 - 1920 (62 years)
John Hardie Wilson FRSE was a 19th/20th-century Scottish botanist and photographer. He specialised in the disease resistance of crops and fruits, with a particular interest in disease-resistant potatoes. As a potato breeder he created Rector, Bishop and Templar.
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Iain S. Mcgregor
#19133
Hugh Cleghorn
1820 - 1895 (75 years)
Hugh Francis Clarke Cleghorn was a Madras-born Scottish physician, botanist, forester and land owner. Sometimes known as the father of scientific forestry in India, he was the first Conservator of Forests for the Madras Presidency, and twice acted as Inspector General of Forests for India. After a career spent in India Cleghorn returned to Scotland in 1868, where he was involved in the first ever International Forestry Exhibition, advised the India Office on the training of forest officers, and contributed to the establishment of lectureships in botany at the University of St Andrews and in forestry at the University of Edinburgh.
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Ernst Ziegler
1849 - 1905 (56 years)
Ernst Ziegler was a Swiss pathologist. Academic career He studied medicine at the universities of Bern and Würzburg, obtaining his doctorate at Bern in 1872. Afterwards, he served as an assistant to Edwin Klebs in Würzburg, and in 1878 he became an associate professor at the University of Freiburg. In 1881 he was appointed professor of pathology and director of the pathological institute in Zürich. During the following year he relocated as a professor to the University of Tübingen, and from 1889 to 1905, he was a professor at Freiburg.
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Seyyed Nassir Ghaemi
#19136
Nellie M. Payne
1900 - 1990 (90 years)
Nellie M. Payne was an American entomologist and agricultural chemist. Her research on insect responses to low temperature had practical agricultural and environmental applications. Early life and education Emily Maria de Cottrell Payne was born in 1900, in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, daughter of James E. Payne Sr. and Mary Emmeline Cottrell Payne. Her father was superintendent of an agricultural station. She had two brothers, Amos and James. She earned a bachelor's and master's degrees in agricultural chemistry and entomology from the Kansas State Agricultural College, and a Ph.D. in 1925 from the University of Minnesota.
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Georg Ruge
1852 - 1919 (67 years)
Georg Ruge was a German anatomist and primatologist who was a native of Berlin. In 1875, he earned his doctorate at the University of Berlin, and later became an assistant to Carl Gegenbaur in Heidelberg. At Heidelberg he performed important research involving primate morphology, particularly studies of its muscular system. In the mid-1880s he authored works that provided a foundation for comparative anatomical and phylogenetic studies on facial muscles in mammals.
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Boris Lavrentiev
1892 - 1944 (52 years)
Boris Innokentyevich Lavrentiev was a Russian and Soviet histologist who served as a professor at the Zoological Institute of Moscow and at the First Moscow State Medical University. His major work was on the peripheral nervous system, regeneration and innervation of internal organs. His mother raised him alone. She was fluent in French and German, and had a special music and artist education .
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Joseph Hutchinson
1902 - 1988 (86 years)
Sir Joseph Burtt Hutchinson FRS was a British biologist. He was Drapers Professor of Agriculture at the University of Cambridge from 1957-1969. Biography He was educated at Bootham School, York and at St John's College, Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1951 and was awarded their Royal Medal in 1967 "In recognition of his distinguished work on the genetics and evolution of crop-plants with particular reference to cotton."
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Kazimierz Szarski
1904 - 1960 (56 years)
Kazimierz Witalis Szarski was a Polish zoologist and professor at the University of Breslau who worked extensively on ornithology and wildlife conservation in Lower Silesia. Kazimierz came from a family of noblemen and was the son of Polish economist and senator Marcin and Olga née Budwiński. After schooling at Vienna and Kraków, he graduated from the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv in 1928 and worked for a while in the Department of Comparative Anatomy. He received a PhD in 1932, working under Kazimierz Kwietniewski on the anatomy of the urinary tract and associated glands of mice. At the end of 1938 he moved to the Jagiellonian University as assistant professor of zoology.
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Hermann Ambronn
1856 - 1927 (71 years)
Ernst Ludwig Victor Hermann Ambronn was a German botanist and microscopist. Ambronn studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Vienna and Berlin, where his instructors were Leopold Kny and Simon Schwendener. Following graduation , he worked as an assistant to August Schenk in the botanical institute at Leipzig, where from 1882 to 1887, he was curator of the university herbarium. In 1889 he received the title of associate professor. During the 1880s, he also spent time conducting research in Trieste and at the zoological station in Naples.
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Dieter‐kurt Hossfeld
#19143
Theodor Rudolph Joseph Nitschke
1834 - 1883 (49 years)
Theodor Rudolph Joseph Nitschke was a Silesian-born German botanist and mycologist. He received his education in Breslau, obtaining his PhD in 1858. In 1860 he relocated to Münster, where in 1867 he was named professor of botany at the university, also serving as director of the botanical academy and botanical garden.
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John M. Whipps
#19145
Vassil Tzankov
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Vassil Tzankov Tzankov was a Bulgarian geologist and paleontologist. He is best known for his work on Upper Cretaceous ammonites and bivalves. Tzankov was head of Bulgarian Geological Survey from 1941 until 1944. In 1945 he became docent and in 1947 - professor, and was appointed to the paleontology chair at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". In the late 1950s Tzankov organized the launch and became the first editor and one of the principal authors of the multi-volume treatise "Fossils of Bulgaria" . Contributors to the treatise included leading Bulgarian specialists in the field. He ...
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Grigorii Kozhevnikov
1866 - 1933 (67 years)
Grigorii Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov was a Russian and Soviet entomologist. In 1904 Kozhevnikov was appointed professor at Moscow University and became director of their zoological museum. He was particularly involved in the study of bees and initiated the study of the Anopheles genus of mosquito.
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Thor Hiorth Schøyen
1885 - 1961 (76 years)
Thor Hiorth Schøyen was a Norwegian entomologist. He became the curator of the Oslo Zoological Museum in 1908. Later, in 1913, he became the government entomologist at the Norwegian Plant Protection Office , a position that he held for 42 years. Schøyen taught at the Norwegian College of Agriculture from 1910 to 1950. He was also a central figure in the Norwegian Entomological Society. He received the King's Medal of Merit in gold in recognition of his work.
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Alexander William Evans
1868 - 1959 (91 years)
Alexander William Evans was a botanist, bryologist, and mycologist that specialized in the flora of Connecticut. Early life Born in Buffalo, New York on May 17, 1868, Evan's family moved to New Haven, Connecticut after the death of his father. After graduation from Hillhouse High School, Evans received his Ph.B. from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University in 1890. An excellent student, Evans was among the top of his class. Two years later, Evans earned his M.D. from the Yale School of Medicine. After a two-year internship at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, he went to the University o...
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David Thomas Gwynne-Vaughan
1871 - 1915 (44 years)
David Thomas Gwynne-Vaughan FRSE FLS MRIA was a 20th-century Welsh botanist and paleobotanist, specialising in fossilised plants . Life He was born on 12 March 1871 at Royston House in Llandovery in Wales, the eldest son of Henry Thomas Gwynne-Vaughan of Cynghordy, and his wife, Elizabeth Thomas. His mother died in 1874 when he was still very young. He was educated at Monmouth School then studied Natural Sciences at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1893. He then worked for some time at the Jodrell Laboratory in Kew.
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Sally Hughes-Schrader
1895 - 1984 (89 years)
Sally Peris Hughes-Schrader was a professor of zoology at Duke University, 1962–1966. Sally P. Hughes was born in Hubbard, Oregon. Hughes was accepted at Columbia University where she majored in protozoology and obtained her M.A. in 1922, completing her Ph.D. at Columbia in 1924. She taught at Bryn Mawr College and later at Columbia University. She was Professor of Zoology and the head of the Biology Department at Barnard College. Hughes performed the first complete dissection of the cranial nerves of the dogfish and made studies of hapoidy, parthenogenesis, hermaphroditism, and the life cycl...
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