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,
#19251
Corneille Antoine Jean Abram Oudemans
1825 - 1906 (81 years)
Corneille Antoine Jean Abram Oudemans or Cornelis Antoon Jan Abraham Oudemans was a Dutch botanist and physician who specialized in fungal systematics. Oudemans was born in Amsterdam, the oldest of seven children of his namesake teacher father and Jacoba Adriana Hammecker. A younger brother, Jean Abraham Chrétien became an astronomer and a nephew, Anthonie Cornelis, became a zoologist. Oudemans went to school in Weltevreden, Java, where his father taught and moved back to Amsterdam for classical studies. He then went to the University of Leiden where he received a medical degree in 1847. He travelled to Europe but he had to return due to the March Revolution.
Go to Profile#19252
Johannes Abromeit
1857 - 1946 (89 years)
Johannes Abromeit was a German botanist and teacher. He was born in the village of Paschleitschen near Ragnit in the Province of Prussia, and he studied natural sciences, German literature, and philosophy at Albertus-Universität Königsberg between 1879 and 1884. During his life, Abromeit served as an assistant at the botanical institute in Königsberg, as a lecturer, and as an associate professor of botany at Albertus-Universität Königsberg. He was heavily involved in the Preussische Botanische Verein throughout his professional life. Carl Christian Mez named the genus Abromeitia from the fam...
Go to Profile#19253
Ernst Münch
1876 - 1946 (70 years)
Ernst Münch was a German plant physiologist who proposed the Pressure Flow Hypothesis in 1930. He studied in Aschaffenburg, and then in Munich with Robert Hartig. He worked in a number of fields including forest pathology, resin production, and fungi. He is best known for the phloem pressure flow hypothesis.
Go to Profile#19254
Heinrich Schrader
1767 - 1836 (69 years)
Heinrich Adolf Schrader was a German botanist and mycologist. He studied medicine early in life. He named the Australian plant genus Hakea in 1797. In 1795 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Göttingen, where in 1803 he became an associate professor to the medical faculty and director of the botanical garden. In 1809 he attained the title of "full professor" at Göttingen, where he taught classes until his retirement.
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Otto Nüsslin
1850 - 1915 (65 years)
Otto Nüsslin , Baden-Baden After completing his studies, he joined the staff of Bernard Altum and Robert Hartig at the Forestry Academy in Eberswalde. In 1880 Nüsslin founded the Lehrstuhl für Zoologie und Forstzoologie at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, where he served as a professor until 1914.
Go to Profile#19256
Jean Kickx
1803 - 1864 (61 years)
Jean Kickx was a Belgian botanist. His father, also known as Jean Kickx was a botanist and mineralogist; his son Jean Jacques Kickx was a professor of botany at the University of Ghent. In 1830 he obtained his PhD at Leuven, later serving as a professor of botany in Brussels and at the University of Ghent . He was a co-founder of the .
Go to Profile#19257
Sydney Smith
1883 - 1969 (86 years)
Sir Sydney Alfred Smith CBE OPR FRSE , was a forensic scientist, pathologist and one of the pre-eminent medico-legal specialists in the world. From 1928 to 1953, Smith was Regius Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, a well-known forensic department of that time. Smith's iconic 1959 autobiography Mostly Murder has run through many British and American editions and has been translated into several other languages.
Go to Profile#19258
Walter Hayle Walshe
1812 - 1892 (80 years)
Walter Hayle Walshe was an Irish physician, a pioneer in the study of cancer with his discovery that malignant cells can be recognised under a microscope. Life The son of William Walshe, a barrister, he was born in Dublin on 19 March 1812. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, entering in 1827, but did not take a degree. In 1830 he went to live in Paris, and there initially studied oriental languages, but in 1832 began medicine. He became acquainted in 1834 with the anatomist Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and François Louis Isidore Valleix, the French physician, w...
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Karel Kavina
1890 - 1948 (58 years)
Karel Kavina was a Czech botanist. Kavina was professor of botany at the Technical University in Prague. He worked on systemics, plant morphology and anatomy, and bryology. He published several atlases and monographs and was editor-in-chief of two botanical journals.
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S. Spafford Ackerly
1895 - 1981 (86 years)
S. Spafford Ackerly was distinguished professor emeritus of psychiatry, University of Louisville School of Medicine. He was a Guggenheim fellow and founded the Kentucky Psychiatric Society, of which he was president. He was vice-president of the American Psychiatric Association, and president of the American Orthopsychiatric Society. He was also a charter fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists and a life fellow of the American College of Physicians. He was a founding member of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry.
Go to Profile#19261
Arthur Robertson Cushny
1866 - 1926 (60 years)
Arthur Robertson Cushny FRS FRSE LLD , was a Scottish pharmacologist and physiologist who became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Life Cushny was born on 6 March 1866 in Fochabers, Moray, Scotland, the fourth son of Rev John Cushny of Speymouth and his wife, Catherine Ogilvie Brown.
Go to Profile#19262
Karl Bernhard Lehmann
1858 - 1940 (82 years)
Karl Bernhard Lehmann was a German hygienist and bacteriologist born in Zurich. He was a brother to publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann . Lehmann studied medicine at the University of Munich, where one of his instructors was Max von Pettenkofer . In 1886, he received his habilitation, and from 1894 to 1932 was a full professor of hygiene at the University of Würzburg .
Go to Profile#19263
Harry B. Greenberg
#19264
Ludwig Carl Christian Koch
1825 - 1908 (83 years)
Ludwig Carl Christian Koch was a German entomologist and arachnologist. He was born in Regensburg, Germany, and died in Nuremberg, Germany. He studied in Nuremberg, initially law, but then turned to medicine and science. From 1850, he practiced as a physician in the Wöhrd district of Nuremberg.
Go to Profile#19265
Frederik Vilhelm August Meinert
1833 - 1912 (79 years)
Frederik Vilhelm August Meinert , was a Danish arachnologist and editor of the first series of Entomologiske Meddelelser. Meinert initially studied theology . Later he was a pupil of Jørgen Matthias Christian Schiødte and he too became Inspektor at the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen. Meinert specialised in comparative anatotomy and histology mainly of Malacostraca and Pycnogonida .
Go to Profile#19266
Christoph Friedrich Hegelmaier
1833 - 1906 (73 years)
Christoph Friedrich Hegelmaier was a German physician and botanist who was a native of Sulzbach, Württemberg. In 1857 he earned his doctorate from the University of Tübingen, and later was a military doctor in Ulm. In 1864 he received his habilitation at Tübingen, where in 1866 he became an associate professor of botany.
Go to Profile#19267
Birger Bohlin
1898 - 1990 (92 years)
Dr. Anders Birger Bohlin was a Swedish palaeontologist. As well as his work on dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals, Bohlin was part of the group that established the existence of Peking Man . In the 1950s, the scientific designation of Peking Man was changed when the hominid was generally decided to be a Homo erectus.
Go to Profile#19268
Lionel de Nicéville
1852 - 1901 (49 years)
Charles Lionel Augustus de Nicéville was a curator at the Indian Museum in Calcutta . He studied the butterflies of the Indian Subcontinent and wrote a three volume monograph on the butterflies of India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Burma and Sri Lanka. He also studied the mantids of the Oriental region.
Go to Profile#19269
Antoine Louis Dugès
1797 - 1838 (41 years)
Antoine Louis Dugès was a French obstetrician and naturalist born in Charleville-Mézières, Ardennes. He was the father of zoologist Alfredo Dugès , and a nephew to midwife Marie-Louise Lachapelle .
Go to Profile#19270
Heinrich Freyer
1802 - 1866 (64 years)
Heinrich Freyer was a Carniolan botanist, zoologist, paleontologist, pharmacist, cartographer, and natural scientist.
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Johan Hjalmar Théel
1848 - 1937 (89 years)
Johan Hjalmar Théel was a Swedish zoologist and university professor. Early life Théel was born on 14 June 1848 in Säter, Sweden. He used to go on hunting trips along the coast of Norway in his youth and became fascinated by the plants and animals he encountered, especially the marine life. He met the zoologist Sven Ludvig Lovén who sparked his interest in sipunculid or peanut worms, especially the genus Phascolion. He studied at Uppsala University and Phascolion was the subject for his thesis, written in 1875. He was also an artist and included his own illustrations in his published articles.
Go to Profile#19272
Walther Kruse
1864 - 1943 (79 years)
Walther Kruse was a German bacteriologist who was a native of Berlin. In 1888 he received his doctorate from Berlin, where he was a student of Rudolf Virchow . From 1889 until 1892 he worked as a bacteriologist in Naples, and in 1892 travelled to Egypt to perform research on dysentery. In 1893 he became an assistant to hygienist Carl Flügge in Breslau, and in 1898 became an associate professor at the University of Bonn. Later he served as a full professor in Königsberg , Bonn and Leipzig .
Go to Profile#19273
J. Playfair McMurrich
1859 - 1939 (80 years)
James Playfair McMurrich, was a Canadian zoologist and academic. Born in Toronto, the son of John McMurrich, McMurrich received a M.A. from the University of Toronto in 1881 and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1885.
Go to Profile#19274
John Hope
1725 - 1786 (61 years)
Professor John Hope was a Scottish physician and botanist. He did enormous work on plant classification and plant physiology, and is now best known as an early supporter of Carl Linnaeus's system of classification. He did not publish much.
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Gilbert Dennison Harris
1864 - 1952 (88 years)
Gilbert Dennison Harris was an American geologist and paleontologist. He was a professor of paleontology and stratigraphic geology at Cornell University and proprietor and editor of two scientific journals, Bulletins of American Paleontology and Palaeontographica Americana. Harris later left Cornell and founded the Paleontological Research Institution, an independent organization dedicated to research and education in the field of paleontology.
Go to Profile#19276
Frederick Stratten Russell
1897 - 1984 (87 years)
Sir Frederick Stratten Russell was an English marine biologist. Russell was born in Bridport, Dorset, and studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. From 1924 he worked for the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, becoming its director in 1945. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1938, was awarded the Linnean Medal in 1961, and knighted in 1965. The National Marine Biological Library at the Marine Biological Association retains much of Russell's scientific and personal papers for the period 1921-1984.
Go to Profile#19277
Bernard Tucker
1901 - 1950 (49 years)
Bernard William Tucker was an English ornithologist. He was lecturer in zoology at Oxford University, a long-time editor of British Birds and one of the authors of The Handbook of British Birds. He was the first Secretary of the British Trust for Ornithology and founder of the Oxford Ornithological Society in 1921.
Go to Profile#19278
Pranciškus Baltrus Šivickis
1882 - 1968 (86 years)
Pranciškus Baltrus Šivickis was a Lithuanian zoologist who moved to the United States where he completed his education. He became a professor at the University of the Philippines before returning to Lithuania to become a professor at Kaunas University of Technology.
Go to Profile#19279
Edgar Crookshank
1858 - 1928 (70 years)
Edgar March Crookshank was an English physician and microbiologist. Biography Crookshank studied at King's College London and qualified for medicine in 1881. He served briefly as an assistant to Joseph Lister, a physician noted for his work promoting antiseptics and sterile surgery. In 1882, Crookshank served as a doctor with the British armed forces sent to Egypt as a result of the Urabi Revolt; he was decorated for his service at the Battle of Tel el-Kebir.
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Eeva Jalavisto
1909 - 1966 (57 years)
Eeva Jalavisto was a Finnish Professor of physiology and an influential researcher and policy maker in the areas of health and social care of the elderly as well as wider gerontology. Early life and education Born in Kerimäki to Chief Physician Dr and Ines Meurman, Eeva Elmgren completed her secondary education at the Helsingin Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu, graduating in 1927.
Go to Profile#19281
Thomas Laycock
1812 - 1876 (64 years)
Thomas Laycock FRSE FRCPE was an English physician and neurophysiologist who was a native of Bedale near York. Among medical historians, he is best known for his influence on John Hughlings Jackson and the psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne. Laycock's interests were the nervous system and psychology; he is known as one of the founders of physiological psychology. He was the first to formulate the concept of reflex action within the brain, and is also known for his classification of mental illnesses.
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Dominique Villars
1745 - 1814 (69 years)
Dominique Villars or Villar was an 18th-century French botanist. His main work is Histoire des plantes du Dauphiné published between 1786 and 1789, in which about 2,700 species are described, after over twenty years of observation in the Dauphiné region of southeastern France. His herbarium and botanical manuscripts are preserved at the Muséum d'histoire naturelle de Grenoble.
Go to Profile#19283
Mihai Ciucă
1883 - 1969 (86 years)
Mihai Ciucă was a Romanian bacteriologist and parasitologist. Biography He was born into a family of teachers in Săveni, Dorohoi County, in the Moldavia region, and spent his childhood in his native village. He attended A. T. Laurian High School in Botoșani, followed by the Boarding High School in Iași, which he completed in 1901. In 1907, he obtained a doctorate in medicine from the University of Bucharest. Ciucă subsequently went to France, where he trained in the microbiology laboratories of Pierre Paul Émile Roux, Albert Calmette, and Constantin Levaditi, as well as in the protozoology laboratory of Félix Mesnil and Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran.
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František Vejdovský
1849 - 1939 (90 years)
František Vejdovský was a Czech zoologist and served as an influential professor of zoology at Charles University from 1892 to 1921. Vejdovsky was born in Kouřim and educated at a Latin school and then at Charles University. He received his doctorate in 1876 and habilitated in 1877 while working under Antonin Frič. He worked as a lecturer in zoology at the college of technology and became a professor of zoology, comparative anatomy and embryology in 1892. He served as a professor until his retirement in 1921. In 1886 he discovered the centrosome in animal cells. He studied mainly the invertebrate groups and was an influential teacher.
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Hanns von Meyenburg
1887 - 1971 (84 years)
Hanns von Meyenburg was a Swiss pathologist. Biography Hanns von Meyenburg was the son of Swiss sculptor Victor von Meyenburg and his wife Konstanze von May, which belong to the Schaffhausen nobility.
Go to Profile#19286
Frederick Tom Brooks
1882 - 1952 (70 years)
Frederick Tom Brooks CBE FRS was an English botanist and Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge. Life Brooks was born in Wells, Somerset the son of Edward Brooks and attended Sexey's School, Somerset from 1895 to 1898. He then attended Merrywood Teacher Training College in Bristol.
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Otto Karl Berg
1815 - 1866 (51 years)
Otto Karl Berg was a German botanist and pharmacist. The official abbreviation of his name, in botany, is O. Berg. He was the son of Johann Friedrich and Wilhelmine Friederike Berg. He studied pharmaceutical botany at the University of Berlin and published his first Handbuch der Pharmazeutischen Botanik as he graduated in 1845. In 1848, he married Caroline Albertine Florentine Witthaus, with whom he had six children.
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Filippo Civinini
1805 - 1844 (39 years)
Filippo Civinini was an Italian anatomist from Pistoia. He is remembered for contributions made in the field of osteology, in particular the cranium. He studied medicine in Pistoia and Pisa, where in 1825 he earned his degree. In 1834 he was appointed anatomical dissector, and two years later attained the chair of anatomy at the University of Pisa. He composed the first catalogue on the collections of anatomy at the Museum of Pisa.
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Robert Thomson Leiper
1881 - 1969 (88 years)
Robert Thomson Leiper FRS CMG was a British parasitologist and helminthologist. Early life and education Leiper was born on 17 April 1881 in Witch Road, Kilmarnock, Scotland; the eldest of three children of John Leiper , tailor, and his wife, Jessie Aird.
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Paul Stein
1852 - 1921 (69 years)
Paul Stein was a German museum curator and entomologist. He specialised in Diptera especially the family Anthomyiidae. In this group he studied the world fauna describing many new genera and species.
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Harold Hume
1875 - 1965 (90 years)
Hardrada Harold Hume was a Canadian-born American university professor, administrator and horticulturalist. Hume was a native of Ontario, and earned bachelor's and master's degrees before embarking on a career as a research botanist, horticulturalist and professor. After working as an academic administrator, Hume later served as the interim president of the University of Florida, serving during September 1947.
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Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Bruch
1819 - 1884 (65 years)
Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Bruch was a German anatomist born in Mainz. In 1842 he earned his medical doctorate from the University of Giessen, and in 1845 he received his habilitation with a dissertation on rigor mortis called Nonnulla de Rigore Mortis. In 1850 he was appointed professor of anatomy and physiology at the University of Basel, and in 1855 returned to Giessen as a professor.
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Friedrich Gottlieb Stebler
1852 - 1935 (83 years)
Friedrich Gottlieb Stebler was a Swiss agriculturalist and ethnographer. History Following classes at the agricultural school in Rütti, he studied agriculture at the Universities of Halle and Leipzig. In 1875, he founded a private Samen-Kontrollstation in Mattenhof bei Bern.
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Karl Julius Perleb
1794 - 1845 (51 years)
Karl Julius Perleb was a German botanist and natural scientist. Life From 1809 to 1811, Karl Julius Perleb studied at the University of Freiburg and earned a doctorate in philosophy and in 1815 a degree in medicine. He lived in Vienna for a brief period of time. In 1818 he returned to the University of Freiburg and began a post-doctoral fellowship. He remained at the university for the remainder of his life. He became an associate professor of natural history in 1821, and in 1823 he became a full professor. From 1828 to 1845 he served as director of the Freiburg Botanical Garden. In 1838 he was appointed prorector at Freiburg University.
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Léo Errera
1858 - 1905 (47 years)
Abraham Léo Errera was a Belgian botanist, known for his research in the field of plant physiology. He worked at the Free University of Brussels in 1883 as an associate and in 1890 a full professor of botany. In addition, he was actively involved in Jewish affairs.
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Victor Pachon
1867 - 1938 (71 years)
Michel Victor Pachon was a French physiologist born in Clermont-Ferrand. In 1892 he earned his doctorate at the University of Paris, and later became a chief assistant in Paris to physiologists Charles Richet and Eugène Gley . In 1911 he became a professor of physiology at the medical faculty of the University of Bordeaux. Today, this institution is named "Faculte de médecine Victor Pachon" in his honor. Pachon is remembered for his work involving blood pressure and oscillometry; which is defined as the measurement of oscillations used in cardiovascular and respiratory physiology. In 1909 Pachon developed a sphygmographic oscillometer for measuring arterial blood pressure.
Go to Profile#19297
Gabriela Balicka-Iwanowska
1867 - 1962 (95 years)
Gabriela Balicka-Iwanowska was a Polish botanist, activist, and legislator. Her botanical research focused on the plant taxonomy of Iris, Tremandraceae and marine algae. Biography Gabriela Iwanowska was born on 16 May 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, the third daughter of Antoni Iwanowski, a government official, and Sybilla Rosenwerth who hailed from a family of landowners. However, her mother died when Gabriela was a young child, in 1874, and her father died only ten years later, leaving Gabriela and her sisters orphaned but well-off members of Warsaw's social elite.
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L. J. F. Brimble
1904 - 1965 (61 years)
Lionel John Farnham Brimble was a botanist, author, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and editor of the journal Nature. Early life He was born in 1904, the son of a blacksmith and innkeeper at Radstock, Somerset, where his early childhood was said to be very happy. He rejected a naval scholarship and instead attended Sexey's School in Bruton, Somerset, as a boarder. He won a scholarship to University College of Reading, where he read Botany under Professor W. Stiles. He obtained a BSc degree from Reading University.
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Ludwig Böhmig
1858 - 1948 (90 years)
Ludwig Böhmig was an Austrian zoologist and platyhelminthologist born in Niederebersbach in the Kingdom of Saxony. Böhmig was a professor at the University of Graz, where he was a long-time collaborator of zoologist Ludwig von Graff . From 1920 to 1929 he was director of the zoological institute at Graz.
Go to Profile#19300
Wilhelm Detmer
1850 - 1930 (80 years)
Wilhelm Detmer was a German botanist, plant physiologist and agriculturalist. In 1871 he obtained his doctorate from the University of Leipzig, later receiving his habilitation at the University of Jena, where in 1879 he became an associate professor. In 1904-05 he conducted scientific research in Java, publishing Botanische and landwirtschaftliche Studien auf Java as a result. In 1923, he was appointed professor of soil science, plant and seed physiology at Jena.
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