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.
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List of the most influential people in Biology,
#19201
Eduard Weber
1806 - 1871 (65 years)
Eduard Friedrich Weber was a German anatomist and physiologist. He was a younger brother to physiologist Ernst Heinrich Weber and physicist Wilhelm Eduard Weber . Weber was born in Wittenberg. He studied medicine at the University of Halle, receiving his doctorate in 1829. From 1836 he served as prosector in the anatomical institute at the University of Leipzig, where in 1838 he became privat-docent with a thesis involving physiological studies on the "galvano-magnetic phenomena" in humans. From 1847 to 1871 he was an associate professor at Leipzig.
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Benjamin Lincoln Robinson
1864 - 1935 (71 years)
Benjamin Lincoln Robinson was an American botanist. Biography Robinson was born on November 8, 1864, in Bloomington, Illinois. In 1887, he received an A.B. from Harvard. He married Margaret Louise Casson on June 29, 1887, and couple traveled to Europe. He studied plant anatomy with H. Solms-Laubach and completed his Dr.phil. at University of Strasbourg in 1889. They returned to the United States in the fall of 1890. Most of his career was Gray Herbarium curator and he died at his summer home in Jaffrey, New Hampshire on July 27, 1935.
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Johannes Theodor Reinhardt
1816 - 1882 (66 years)
Johannes Theodor Reinhardt was a Danish zoologist and herpetologist. He was the son of Johannes Christopher Hagemann Reinhardt. Biography He participated as botanist in the first Galathea Expedition . In 1848 he became a curator at the Kongelige Naturhistoriske Museum in Copenhagen . He taught classes in zoology at the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet and at the University of Copenhagen . In 1854 he received the title of professor.
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Gustaf Einar Du Rietz
1895 - 1967 (72 years)
Gustaf Einar Du Rietz was a Swedish lichenologist and ecologist. He was part of a Swedish Australasian Botanical Expedition to New Zealand in 1926 to study lichens in New Zealand along with his wife Greta Sernander-Du Rietz, who was also a lichenologist. He later became professor of plant ecology at the University of Uppsala in 1934.
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Otto Kröber
1882 - 1969 (87 years)
Otto Kröber was a German entomologist specialising in Diptera. He worked mainly on Tabanidae, Omphralidae, Therevidae and Conopidae. Kröber was a professor in the Zoological Museum in Hamburg . Works SelectedTherevidae.Genera.Ins. .
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Christian Gottlieb Ludwig
1709 - 1773 (64 years)
Christian Gottlieb Ludwig was a German physician and botanist born in Brieg, Silesia . He was the father of physician/naturalist Christian Friedrich Ludwig and of Christian L. Ludwig , a physician/scientist known for his translation of Joseph Priestley's scientific experiments.
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René Maire
1878 - 1949 (71 years)
René Charles Joseph Ernest Maire was a French botanist and mycologist. His major work was the Flore de l'Afrique du Nord in 16 volumes published posthumously in 1953. He collected plants from Algeria, Morocco, France, and Mali for the herbarium of the National Botanic Garden of Belgium.
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Théophile Rudolphe Studer
1845 - 1922 (77 years)
Théophile Rudolphe Studer or Theophil Studer was a Swiss ornithologist and marine biologist. He worked on the collections made on the voyage of the SMS Gazelle and produced a catalogue of the birds of the Switzerland. Another major work was on the study of dog skeletons associated with prehistoric human settlements. He worked as a professor of zoology at the University of Bern from 1873.
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E. F. Warburg
1908 - 1966 (58 years)
Edmund Frederic "Heff" Warburg was an English botanist, known as the co-author of two important British floras. Early life and education Warburg was born in London on 22 March 1908, son of Sir Oscar Emanuel Warburg, businessman and later chairman of the London County Council, and his wife, Catherine née Byrne. His father was a member of the distinguished German–Jewish Warburg family that included botanist Otto Warburg and Otto Heinrich Warburg the Nobel Prize–winning physiologist.
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Tom Tutin
1908 - 1987 (79 years)
Thomas Gaskell Tutin, FRS was Professor of Botany at the University of Leicester and co-author of Flora of the British Isles and Flora Europaea. Earlier life Tutin was born on 21 April 1908 in Kew, Surrey, son of Frank Tutin, a biochemist at the Lister Institute, and his wife, Jane Ardern. He was educated at Cotham Grammar School, Bristol, then won a scholarship to Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied Biological Sciences. In 1929, while still an undergraduate, he went on a botanical expedition to Madeira and the Azores, afterwards publishing two papers on the results of his studies th...
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Thore Christian Elias Fries
1886 - 1930 (44 years)
Thore Christian Elias Fries was Professor of Systematic Botany at Lund University. He specialized in lichenology and plant geography. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation T.C.E.Fr. when citing a botanical name. He did his field work and travelled in India and Africa
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Ferdinand Albin Pax
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Ferdinand Albin Pax was a German botanist specializing in spermatophytes. A collaborator of Adolf Engler, he wrote several monographs and described several species of plants and animals from Silesia and the Carpathians. He was a professor at Wrocław University from 1893. His son Ferdinand Albert Pax was a noted zoologist.
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Johan Reinhardt
1776 - 1845 (69 years)
Johannes Christopher Hagemann Reinhardt , sometimes called J. C. H. Reinhardt, was a professor in zoology at the University of Copenhagen. Born in Rendalen parish in Norway, his father, Johannes Henrik Reinhardt, was a priest, and his mother, Johanne Elisabeth Mommesen, was from Holmestrand . He was not baptized Johannes, but adopted the name later. After having been educated at home, he came to Copenhagen in 1792 and entered the university in 1793, where he passed the first two examinations, but after that spent almost two years at home, where he used the opportunity to study plants and animals.
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Henry Alleyne Nicholson
1844 - 1899 (55 years)
Henry Alleyne Nicholson FRS FRSE FGS FLS was a British palaeontologist and zoologist. Life The son of John Nicholson , a biblical scholar, and his wife Annie Elizabeth Waring, he was born at Penrith, Cumberland on 11 September 1844. His younger sister was the writer Annie Elizabeth Nicholson Ireland, and one of his brothers was John Henry Nicholson, author and poet. He was educated at Appleby Grammar School and then studied Sciences at the universities of Göttingen and Edinburgh . Geology had early attracted his attention, and his first publication was a thesis for his D.Sc. degree titled On...
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Ernst Stromer
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach was a German paleontologist. He is best remembered for his expedition to Egypt, during which the first known remains of Spinosaurus were discovered. He described the following Cretaceous dinosaurs from Egypt: Aegyptosaurus, Bahariasaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and the enigmatic theropod, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. Stromer also described the giant crocodilian, Stomatosuchus.
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Daniel Oliver
1830 - 1916 (86 years)
Daniel Oliver, FRS was an English botanist. He was Librarian of the Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1860–1890 and Keeper there from 1864–1890, and Professor of Botany at University College, London from 1861–1888.
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Peter Ludvig Panum
1820 - 1885 (65 years)
Peter Ludvig Panum was a Danish physiologist and pathologist born on the island of Bornholm in Rønne. The Panum Institute in Copenhagen is named in his honor. Early life and education Panum was born in Rønne on the island of Bornholm, the son of regiment surgeon Jens Severin Nathanael Panum and Johanne Caroline Louise Charlotte Lande . The family moved to Eckernförde in 1829, where his father had assumed a position as regiment surgeon. After matriculating from Flensburg Learned School in 1840, Panum enrolled first at Kiel University before in 1841 transferring to the University of Copenhagen...
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Gustave Roussy
1874 - 1948 (74 years)
Gustave Roussy was a Swiss-French neuropathologist born in Vevey, Switzerland. Career As a hospital interne in Paris, Roussy worked under neurologists Pierre Marie and Joseph Jules Dejerine. In 1907 he earned his doctorate from the University of Paris, and in 1925 was appointed professor of pathological anatomy at the Faculté de Médecine. Later on, he was named dean and rector to the faculty of medicine at the university.
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Jules Émile Planchon
1823 - 1888 (65 years)
Jules Émile Planchon was a French botanist born in Ganges, Hérault. Biography After receiving his Doctorate of Science at the University of Montpellier in 1844, he worked for a while at the Royal Botanical Gardens in London, and for a few years was a teacher in Nancy and Ghent. In 1853 he became head of the department of botanical sciences at the University of Montpellier, where he remained for the remainder of his career.
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Henry Herbert Donaldson
1857 - 1938 (81 years)
Henry Herbert Donaldson was an American pioneer of neurology. One of his most influential studies was on the effect of sensory deprivation, based on the study of Laura Bridgman's brain, on the development of the brain which resulted in the landmark work The Growth of the Brain . He served as a professor of neurology at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology at the University of Pennsylvania and was a major influence on a generation of American neurologists and was a key promoter of the use of the rat as a laboratory research model.
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Thomas Graham Brown
1882 - 1965 (83 years)
Thomas Graham Brown FRS was a Scottish mountaineer and physiologist, most famous for finding three new routes up the east face of Mont Blanc. Life and academic work Graham Brown was born in Edinburgh on 27 March 1882. His father, Dr John Joseph Graham Brown was a President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1912 to 1914. His mother was Jane Pasley Hay Thorburn. The family lived at 63 Castle Street in Edinburgh's New Town.
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Philipp Friedrich Gmelin
1721 - 1768 (47 years)
Philipp Friedrich Gmelin was a professor of botany and chemistry. He studied the chemistry of antimony and wrote texts on the pancreatic ducts, mineral waters, and botany. He was a brother of the famous traveler Johann Georg Gmelin. He obtained his Master's degree in 1742, at the University of Tübingen under Burchard Mauchart.
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Gen-ichi Koidzumi
1883 - 1953 (70 years)
was a Japanese botanist, author of several papers and monographs on phytogeography including work on roses and Amygdaloideae , maples , mulberries , and many other plants. His name is sometimes transliterated as Gen’ichi or Gen-Iti, or as Koizumi.
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Wilhelmine Key
1872 - 1955 (83 years)
Wilhelmine "Minnie" Marie Enteman Key was an American geneticist. She was the first woman to gain a PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago, where she studied coloration in paper wasps. She contributed to the study of eugenics and was an influential teacher to Sewall Wright.
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Ernst Heinrich Friedrich Meyer
1791 - 1858 (67 years)
Ernst Heinrich Friedrich Meyer was a German botanist and botanical historian. Born in Hanover, he lectured in Göttingen and in 1826 became a professor of botany at the University of Königsberg, as well as Director of the Botanical Garden. His botanical specialty was the Juncaceae, or family of rushes. His major work was the four-volume Geschichte der Botanik . His history covered ancient authorities such as Aristotle and Theophrastus, explored the beginnings of modern botany in the context of 15th- and 16th-century intellectual practice, and offered a wealth of biographical data on early modern botanists.
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Jan Kops
1765 - 1849 (84 years)
Jan Kops was an Anabaptist Dutch agronomist and botanist. His most notable contribution to botany was the founding of the long-lived journal "Flora Batava" in 1800 and contributing text for the first 10 volumes.
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Wilhelm Dames
1843 - 1898 (55 years)
Wilhelm Barnim Dames was a German paleontologist of the Berlin University, who described the first complete specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx in 1894. This specimen is currently in the Museum für Naturkunde.
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August Schenk
1815 - 1891 (76 years)
Joseph August Schenk was an Austrian-born, German botanist and paleobotanist. In 1837 he obtained his medical doctorate from the University of Munich, followed by studies in botany at the Universities of Erlangen, Berlin and Vienna. In 1840 he earned his PhD in botany at Munich and during the following year, received his habilitation for botany with the dissertation "Genera et species Cyperacearum, quae in regno Graeco, archipelago et in insulis". From 1850 to 1868, he was a full professor of botany at the University of Würzburg, followed by a professorship at the University of Leipzig , where he was a successor to Georg Heinrich Mettenius.
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Cyril Tenison White
1890 - 1950 (60 years)
Cyril Tenison White was an Australian botanist. Early life White was born in Brisbane, Queensland, to Henry White, a trade broker, and Louisa . He attended school at South Brisbane State School, and was appointed pupil-assistant to the Colonial Botanist of Queensland in 1905, a position previously held by his grandfather on his mother's side, Frederick Manson Bailey. White also succeeded his uncle, John Frederick Bailey, in becoming Queensland's Government Botanist in 1917.
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Morten Thrane Brünnich
1737 - 1827 (90 years)
Morten Thrane Brünnich was a Danish zoologist and mineralogist. Biography Brünnich was born in Copenhagen, the son of a portrait painter. He studied oriental languages and theology, but soon became interested in natural history. He contributed his observations of insects to Erik Pontoppidan's Danske Atlas . After being put in charge of the natural history collection of Christian Fleischer he became interested in ornithology, and in 1764 he published Ornithologia Borealis, which included the details of many Scandinavian birds, some described for the first time.
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Zheng Ji
1900 - 2010 (110 years)
Zheng Ji also known as Libin T. Cheng , was a Chinese nutritionist and a pioneering biochemist. He was reputed to be the world's oldest professor and the founder of modern nutrition science in China, having lived to the age of 110.
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Carl Wiman
1867 - 1944 (77 years)
Carl Johan Josef Ernst Wiman was a Swedish palaeontologist, the first professor of palaeontology and historical geology at Uppsala University, and the father of Swedish vertebrate palaeontology. Wiman was instrumental in the construction of the Palaeontological Museum of Uppsala University , which contains the largest collection of Chinese fossil vertebrate material outside China.
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Johann Jacob Paul Moldenhawer
1766 - 1827 (61 years)
Johann Jacob Paul Moldenhawer was a German botanist who made a number of important discoveries in plant anatomy. He was born in Hamburg, the son of a minister, and started out studying theology and the classics. At some unknown point he became interested in plants, and in 1791 he published Tentamen in historiam plantarum Theophrasti, on Theophrastus, and the following year he is recorded as "Extraordinary Professor of Botany and Fruit Tree Culture" at the University of Kiel. He studied plant anatomy from 1795 until 1812, when he published Beyträge zur Anatomie der Pflanzen on his results. Immediately subsequently he concentrated on fruit tree culture.
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Carl Fredrik Fallén
1764 - 1830 (66 years)
Carl Fredrik Fallén was a Swedish botanist and entomologist. Fallén taught at the Lund University. He wrote Diptera Sueciae . Fallén described very many species of Diptera and Hymenoptera He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1810.
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Adam Sedgwick
1854 - 1913 (59 years)
Adam Sedgwick FRS was a British zoologist and Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, Imperial College, London, and a great nephew of the renowned geologist Adam Sedgwick. Sedgwick was born in Norwich, Norfolk in 1854, the son of Rev Richard Sedgwick, vicar of Dent, Yorkshire and his wife Mary Jane, daughter of John Woodhouse of Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire. He was the great-nephew of Rev. Adam Sedgwick . He married Laura, daughter of Captain Robinson of Armagh.
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Ioan Cantacuzino
1863 - 1934 (71 years)
Ioan I. Cantacuzino was a renowned Romanian physician and bacteriologist, a professor at the School of Medicine and Pharmacy of the University of Bucharest, and a titular member of the Romanian Academy. He established the fields of microbiology and experimental medicine in Romania, and founded the Ioan Cantacuzino Institute.
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William John Gies
1872 - 1956 (84 years)
William John Gies was an American biochemist and dentist. Gies was born February 21, 1872, in Reisterstown, Maryland. He received his B.S. at Gettysburg College in 1893, Ph.B. at the Yale Scientific School in 1894, M.S. from Gettysburg in 1896, and Ph.D. at Yale University in 1897.
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Frederick K. Goodwin
#19239
William Ashbrook Kellerman
1850 - 1908 (58 years)
William Ashbrook Kellerman was an American botanist, mycologist and photographer. Biography Kellerman was born in May 1850 in Ohio, the son of Daniel Kemberling Kellerman and Iva/Ivy Ashbrook Kellerman. His father a merchant and Farmer originally from Pennsylvania did well for himself and put his son in fine schools. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University in 1874. After graduation, Kellerman was hired as Professor of Natural Sciences at the Wisconsin State Normal School, a position he held for five years. During this time, in 1876, he married Stella Victoria Denn...
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Charles Schuchert
1858 - 1942 (84 years)
Charles Schuchert was an American invertebrate paleontologist who was a leader in the development of paleogeography, the study of the distribution of lands and seas in the geological past. Biography He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 3, 1858, to Philip and Agatha Schuchert. He received a common school education up to the age of thirteen, and then he spent a number of years working in his father's furniture business. Schuchert possessed an aptitude for scientific investigation, and in 1878 he began to attend meetings of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History. Here he developed a friendship with fellow Cincinnati native Edward Oscar Ulrich.
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Mikhail Rimsky-Korsakov
1873 - 1951 (78 years)
Mikhail Nikolaevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian Empire and Soviet zoologist who specialized in entomology at Saint Petersburg University and the Petrograd Forestry Institute. A son of the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, he was awarded as an Honored Scientist of the RSFSR .
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Josef Mik
1839 - 1900 (61 years)
Josef Mik, also Joseph Mik was a Bohemian entomologist mainly interested in Diptera. He described many new species and made contributions to knowledge of the Diptera of Central Europe. Mik was the first dipterist to clarify the chaetotaxy of the legs. " On the legs I distinguish a front [chaeta]- and a hind-side ; an upper- and an under-side. When we imagine the leg stretched out horizontally and perpendicularly to the longitudinal axis of the body, the front-side is that which is turned towards the head, and the hind-sidethat turned towards the end of the body ; the upper- and under-side, in...
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David Humphreys Storer
1804 - 1891 (87 years)
David Humphreys Storer was an American physician and naturalist. He served as dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard Medical School from 1855 to 1864. He identified numerous fish species and published on the reptiles and fishes of New England. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1872.
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Sydney J. Hickson
1859 - 1940 (81 years)
Sydney John Hickson FRS , was a British zoologist known for his groundbreaking research in evolution, embryology, genetics, and systematics. Hickson travelled in the Malay archipelago in 1885–1886. He was appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester in 1894 and was elected FRS in 1895. The Manchester Museum has many specimens of coral that came from Sydney Hickson, a specialist on corals. These include a number of type specimens of names published by Hickson and others, including Stanley Gardiner. Hickson's papers are held at the University of Manchester Library. Hickson was ...
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Hinrich Nitsche
1845 - 1902 (57 years)
Hinrich Nitsche was a German zoologist. He was a son-in-law to geographer Oscar Peschel . He studied zoology at the Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, obtaining his doctorate at the latter institution in 1868. After graduation, he worked as an assistant to Rudolf Leuckart at the University of Leipzig. During the Franco-Prussian War, he served as a volunteer medical assistant. In 1875, he became an associate professor of zoology at Leipzig, and during the following year was appointed professor of zoology at the Royal Saxon Academy of Forestry in Tharandt.
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George Britton Halford
1824 - 1910 (86 years)
George Britton Halford was an English-born anatomist and physiologist, founder of the first medical school in Australia, University of Melbourne School of Medicine. Background Halford was born in Petworth, Sussex, England, second son of James Halford, a merchant of Haverstock Hill, and his wife Nancy, née Gadd. Halford began studying medicine in 1842, became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1851, and of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1852. He obtained his doctorate of medicine at University of St Andrews in 1854. After practising at Liverpool, he was in 1857 appointed lecturer in anatomy at the Grosvenor Place school of medicine, London.
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Gustav Kunze
1793 - 1851 (58 years)
Gustav Kunze was a German professor of zoology, an entomologist and botanist with an interest mainly in ferns and orchids. Kunze joined the Wernerian Natural History Society in Edinburgh in 1817. He later became Zoology Professor at Leipzig University and in 1837 was appointed director of the Botanical Gardens in Leipzig. In 1851 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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Luis Simarro Lacabra
1851 - 1921 (70 years)
Luis Simarro Lacabra was a Spanish neurologist who was born in Rome while his parents were living in the Papal States. Career He studied medicine in Valencia and Madrid, and in 1877 was appointed director of the Santa Isabel insane asylum at Leganés, outside of Madrid. From 1880 he lived in Paris and studied general anatomy and histology with Louis-Antoine Ranvier and clinical neurology under Jean Martin Charcot. Here he also came under the influence of philosopher Ernest Renan . anatomist Mathias-Marie Duval and psychiatrist Valentin Magnan . In 1885 he returned to Madrid and opened a priva...
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Michel Félix Dunal
1789 - 1856 (67 years)
Michel Félix Dunal was a French botanist. He was a professor of botany in Montpellier, France. He held the chair of natural history at the University of Montpellier from 1816 until his death in 1856. The Solanaceous plant genus Dunalia is named after him.
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Ignaz Rudolph Schiner
1813 - 1873 (60 years)
Ignaz Rudolf Schiner was an Austrian entomologist who specialised in Diptera. Schiner was born in , Horn and died in Vienna. He was a ministerial secretary in Vienna His most significant publications are:Fauna Austriaca. Die Fliegen . Nach der analytischen Methode bearbeitet 1862–1864.As editor Catalogus systematicus dipterorum Europae. W.M.W. Impensis: Societatis Zoologico-Botanicae 1864.Schiner's collections are in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna.
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