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,
#19301
Hannah Caroline Aase
1883 - 1980 (97 years)
Hannah Caroline Aase was a botanist and cytologist. Career Aase received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of South Dakota in 1906 and a graduate degree from South Dakota State College in 1928. In 1915, she received a PhD from the University of Chicago. In her 1915 dissertation, she studied the vascular anatomy of the megasporophylls of conifers. She found that plants in the Coniferales family generally reduce the number of sporophylls in the strobilus and a modified compound sporophyll appears later in disguised forms but loses one of the sporophyll members.
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Tadeusz Jaczewski
1899 - 1974 (75 years)
Tadeusz Antoni Franciszek Jaczewski was a Polish entomologist who specialised in Hemiptera. Life and work Jaczewski was born in St. Petersburg, the son of geologist Leonard and Helena née Biron. Introduced to science at an early age. After attending a German classical gymnasium he studied at the Saint Petersburg State University. He then went to the University of Warsaw and graduated from there. He worked at the Warsaw Zoological Museum. In 1921 he took part in the Third Silesian Uprising. In December he joined an expedition to Brazil led by Tadeusz Chrostowski. He received a doctorate from the University of Poznan in 1925 and taught geography in schools in Warsaw until 1935.
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William Henry Chandler
1878 - 1970 (92 years)
William Henry Chandler was an American botanist and horticulturalist specializing in pomology . He was a professor and department head at: Cornell University from 1913 to 1923; and in the University of California system from 1923 to 1948.
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Bernt Arne Lynge
1884 - 1942 (58 years)
Bernt Arne Lynge was a Norwegian botanist. He specialized in lichen, in particular species from the Arctic and Antarctica. Lynge was born at Lyngør in Aust-Agder, Norway. After graduation, he was employed as an assistant in the University of Oslo Botanical Garden and later curator at the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo. He was appointed professor of botany at the University of Oslo from 1935. Lynge was elected to the Norwegian Academy of Science. His publications included Studies on the Lichen Flora of Norway and Vascular Plants from Novaya Semlyen . The Spitsbergen glaci...
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John Percival
1863 - 1949 (86 years)
John Percival FLS was an English botanist and professor of agricultural botany, known for his research on the genera Triticum and Aegilops, as well as the taxonomy of wheat. Biography After education from 1868 to 1877 at the National school in Aysgarth, John Percival, a Quaker, was employed at the York Glass Works, owned at that time by a Quaker family named Spence. Percival worked there from 1877 to 1884. Mrs T. A. Cotton, a member of the Spence family, endowed him with a scholarship. He matriculated on 13 October 1884 at St John's College, Cambridge. He graduated there with B.A. in 1887, M.A.
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Alice Maria Ottley
1882 - 1971 (89 years)
Alice Maria Ottley was a botanist, author, assistant professor and curator of the herbarium at Wellesley College. She collected and studied American flora, particularly species of Lotus, and publishing books and articles on botany.
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Håkon Wexelsen
1898 - 1979 (81 years)
Håkon Wexelsen was a Norwegian plant geneticist. He was born at Bærum in Akershus, Norway. He took the dr.agric. degree in 1946, and was a professor at the Norwegian College of Agriculture from 1947 to 1968. He served as rector there from 1957 to 1960.
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John Stuart Yeates
1900 - 1986 (86 years)
John Stuart Yeates was a New Zealand academic and botanist. The founding head of Agricultural Botany at Massey Agricultural College, he was also an accomplished breeder of azaleas, rhododendrons and lilies.
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Einar Naumann
1891 - 1934 (43 years)
Einar Christian Leonard Naumann was a Swedish botanist and limnologist who was professor of limnology at the University of Lund. Naumann worked during the summers at the Fishery Station in Aneboda , where he established a field laboratory of the Limnological Institute in Lund .
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Hermann Beitzke
1875 - 1953 (78 years)
Hermann Beitzke was a German pathologist born in Tecklenburg, Westphalia. Beitzke studied medicine at several universities, earning his doctorate in 1899 from the University of Kiel. In 1900-01 he was an assistant at the institute of hygiene in Halle an der Saale, and afterwards worked at the pathology institutes in Göttingen and Berlin. In 1911 he became a professor at the University of Lausanne, and in 1922 relocated to the University of Graz, where he taught classes until 1941.
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Alexander Murray Drennan
1884 - 1984 (100 years)
Alexander Murray Drennan FRSE FRCPE was a Scottish pathologist. In the First World War, he promoted the widespread use of Edinburgh University Solution . A keen yachtsman, he owned two yachts: Kestrel and Marishka.
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J. Roger Porter
1909 - 1979 (70 years)
J. Roger Porter was an internationally known microbiologist. Porter married Majorie Ann Perkins in 1934. He was the father of four children . Life and work Porter graduated from Iowa State University, with B.S. and M.S. degrees in Bacteriology in 1933 and 1935. He obtained his Ph.D. in Bacteriology and Chemistry from Yale University in 1938. His career on the University of Iowa's Department of Microbiology faculty spanned the period 1938 through 1977. He was Department Head from 1949 through his retirement in 1977, when he became an emeritus professor. He served on 19 standing committee...
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Willy Adolf Theodor Ramme
1887 - 1953 (66 years)
Willy Adolf Theodor Ramme was a German entomologist. Ramme was born in Berlin and was a Curator in the Berlin's Natural History Museum. He specialised in Orthoptera. Works Partial list1921 Orthopterologische Beiträge. Archiv für Naturgeschichte Abt. A, 86: 81-166.1928 Orthoptera palaearctica critica. V. Ein neues Genus der Euprepocnemini . Eos , Madrid, 4 : 113-116, 1 fig., pl. 2.1929 Afrikanische Acrididae. Revisionen und Beschreibungen wenig bekannter und neuer Gattungen und Arten. Mitteilungen aus dem zoologischen Museum in Berlin, 15 : 247-492, pl. 2 à 16.1930 Ein neuer Anthermus von Tanganyika .
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Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire
1879 - 1915 (36 years)
Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire FRSE was a short-lived but influential British zoologist and geneticist. He was the first person to lecture in Genetics in the UK. He caused a stir in the world of genetics in the early 20th century in the debate over theory, sometimes referred to as The Mendel Wars.
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Jakob Johann von Uexküll
1864 - 1944 (80 years)
Jakob Johann Freiherr von Uexküll was a Baltic German biologist who worked in the fields of muscular physiology and animal behaviour studies and was an influence on the cybernetics of life. However, his most notable contribution is the notion of Umwelt, used by semiotician Thomas Sebeok and philosopher Martin Heidegger. His works established biosemiotics as a field of research.
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Adolf Pascher
1881 - 1945 (64 years)
Adolf Alois Pascher was a Bohemian botanist and phycologist, notable for his descriptions of several new genera of algae, protists, and vascular plants. Biography Born in Stožec, Pascher was the son of a teacher, attended the Gymnasium in Krummau and studied natural science at the German University in Prague, from which he received a doctorate in 1905, and graduated in 1909. In 1908, in partnership with Viktor Langhans, he co-founded a Hydrobiological Laboratory in Hirschberg. In 1912 he became an associate professor of Herbalism and Cryptogamic Botany, later being promoted to Full Professor in 1927.
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Carlotta Maury
1874 - 1938 (64 years)
Carlotta Joaquina Maury was a geologist, stratigrapher, paleontologist, and was one of the first women to work as a professional scientist in the oil and gas industry. She worked as a palaeontologist within an oil company; she was a petroleum geologist at Royal Dutch Shell. Maury focused on Tertiary mollusks. Maury initially taught in universities after attending Cornell University finishing with a PhD in 1902, although she had trouble achieving a full-time position. However, she really wanted to pursue paleontological expeditions. Even though she went on to later be successful, there were still elements of difficulty in her early career, in some ways due to her gender.
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Leif Størmer
1905 - 1979 (74 years)
Leif Størmer was a Norwegian paleontologist and geologist. He was professor of historical geology at the University of Oslo from 1946 to 1975. His father was the mathematician Carl Størmer, and his son the mathematician Erling Størmer.
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Yu Yokoya
1900 - 1967 (67 years)
Yu Yokoya was a Japanese marine biologist. He worked at least after 1917 on Japanese decapod crustaceans for the Fisheries Institute, Faculty of Agriculture, Tokyo Imperial Univ. Works Some Rare and New Species of Decapod Crustaceans Found in the Vicinity of the Misaki Marine Biological Station1933 - On the distribution of decapod crustaceans inhabiting the continental shelf around Japan, chiefly based upon the materials collected by S.S. Soyo-Maru, during the year 1923–1930. Journal of the College of Agriculture, Tokyo Imperial University, 12 : 1–226.
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Adele Gerard Lewis Grant
1881 - 1969 (88 years)
Adele Gerard Lewis Grant was an American feminist, botanist, teacher, taxonomist, curator, and explorer. Career In 1903, she obtained a B.Sc. in botany from the University of California at Berkeley. She continued with her studies, gaining an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in botany from Washington State University. Before her move to South Africa, she taught at the Missouri Botanical Garden and Cornell University.
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Robert John Harvey Gibson
1860 - 1929 (69 years)
Robert John Harvey Gibson CBE FRSE FLS DL JP was a Scottish botanist and academic author. In literature his name often appears as R. J. Harvey-Gibson. Life He was born on 2 November 1860, the son of Rev Robert Gibson of the Scottish Episcopal Church. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School. He then studied at, consecutively, the University of Aberdeen, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Strasbourg.
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Frjeda Blanchard
1889 - 1977 (88 years)
Frjeda Blanchard, née Cobb , was an American plant and animal geneticist, the first to demonstrate Mendelian inheritance in reptiles. Life and work Frjeda Blanchard was born on October 2, 1889, in Sydney, Australia, daughter of the plant pathologist and nematologist, Nathan Cobb. Her family returned to the United States in 1905, first living in Hawaii and then settling in Washington, D.C. Cobb's family helped him in his work and Frjeda aided her father in his laboratory. She went to Radcliffe College for three years before returning home to assist her father in his home laboratory and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign with a B.S.
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Florence Annie Mockeridge
1889 - 1958 (69 years)
Florence Annie Mockeridge was a British botanist and university professor. Mockeridge was a lecturer at King's College, London, 1917-1922, and lecturer at University College Swansea 1922-1954. She was also a Linnean Society Fellow. Her research output included significant work on growth promoting substances.
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Edith A. Roberts
1881 - 1977 (96 years)
Edith Adelaide Roberts was an American botanist studying plant physiology and a pioneer in plant ecology. She created the first ecological laboratory in the United States, promoted natural landscaping along with Elsa Rehmann, and proved that plants were the main source of vitamin A.
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Gustav Ricker
1870 - 1948 (78 years)
Gustav Wilhelm August Josef Ricker was a German physician and pathologist born in Hadamar, Hesse-Nassau. He studied philosophy and medicine at several universities, earning his doctorate in 1893 at the University of Berlin. In 1897 he received his habilitation under Albert Thierfelder at the University of Rostock, and from 1906 until 1933 was head of pathology at the city hospitals in Magdeburg. Afterwards he worked as a private scholar in Berlin and Dresden.
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Günther Niethammer
1908 - 1974 (66 years)
Günther Theodor Niethammer was a German ornithologist who served during the Second World War with the Nazi Waffen-SS at various places including the Auschwitz concentration camp where he conducted studies on birds.
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Angela Roberts
Angela Charlotte Roberts is a British neurobiologist who is a professor of physiology at the University of Cambridge. Her research considers the neural circuits that underpin cognition and emotion. She leads the Cambridge Marmoset Research Centre. She was awarded the 2020 Goldman-Rakic Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Cognitive Neuroscience.
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Perry Greeley Holden
1865 - 1959 (94 years)
Perry Greeley Holden was the first professor of agronomy in the United States. Biography Holden was born in Dodge Center, Minnesota, to Dennison Franklin Holden and Mary Helen Wilson. He graduated from Michigan Agricultural College in 1889 and taught at M. A. C. from 1889 to 1893. On November 11, 1892, he married Carrie Amalia Burnett . They had four children; one of them died as an infant. He studied at the Michigan State University where he was awarded an M.S. in 1895.
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Josephine Langworthy Rathbone
1899 - 1989 (90 years)
Josephine Langworthy Rathbone was an American physiologist whose research and work involved physical education and relaxation. She taught at Teachers College, Columbia University from 1930 to 1958, and was a founding member of the American College of Sports Medicine .
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Vagn Walfrid Ekman
1874 - 1954 (80 years)
Vagn Walfrid Ekman was a Swedish oceanographer. Born in Stockholm to Fredrik Laurentz Ekman, himself an oceanographer, he became committed to oceanography while studying physics at the University of Uppsala and, in particular, on hearing Vilhelm Bjerknes lecture on fluid dynamics.
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Olaf Hagerup
1889 - 1961 (72 years)
Olaf Hagerup was a Danish botanist. He studied botany at the University of Copenhagen from 1911 under the professors Eugenius Warming, Christen C. Raunkiær, L. Kolderup Rosenvinge og W. Johannsen. He took his Ph.D. from the same university in 1930. From 1934 to 1960, he was superintendent at the Botanical Museum of the University of Copenhagen.
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Marius Jeuken
1916 - 1983 (67 years)
Marius Jeuken was professor of theoretical biology at the Institute of Theoretical Biology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, from 1968 until his death. Jeuken was also a member of the Society of Jesus; he joined the Dutch Jesuits in 1934 and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1946 in Maastricht.
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Ronald Hamlyn-Harris
1874 - 1953 (79 years)
Dr Ronald Hamlyn-Harris was an English-born entomologist who spent most of his working life in Australia. Following seven years teaching science at Toowoomba Grammar School in Queensland he became Director of the Queensland Museum, later occupying several positions culminating in lecturing at the University of Queensland.
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Arthur Mills Lea
1868 - 1932 (64 years)
Arthur Mills Lea was an Australian entomologist. Lea was born in Surry Hills, New South Wales, the second son of Thomas Lea, from Bristol, England, and his wife Cornelia, née Dumbrell, of Sydney. As a child, Lea was interested in insects and studied them in his spare time. He worked for a chartered accountant firm in Sydney for a while, then became an assistant entomologist for the minister of Agriculture at Sydney in 1891. In 1895 he became government entomologist in Western Australia. Then in 1899 he was appointed government entomologist in Tasmania, where he succeeded in controlling the c...
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Friedrich Mauz
1900 - 1979 (79 years)
Friedrich Robert Mauz was a German psychiatrist who was involved with the Nazi T-4 Euthanasia Program. From 1939 until 1945, Mauz was the Professor of Psychiatry at Albertina University in Königsberg. In 1953, he became the Professor of Psychiatry at Münster.
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Eizi Matuda
1894 - 1978 (84 years)
Eiji Matsuda was a Mexican botanist of Japanese origin. In scholarly works, his name is generally romanised as "Eizi Matuda" following the "Kunrei" system. Biography Matuda and his wife, Miduho Kaneko de Matuda, were naturalized Mexican citizens and had five Mexico-born children.
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Charles Edward Moss
1870 - 1930 (60 years)
Charles Edward Moss , was an English-born South African botanist, the youngest son of a nonconformist minister, and is noted for being the editor of the first two parts of The Cambridge British Flora published in 1914 and 1920. The Cambridge British Flora, under the editorship of Moss, was intended to be a ten-volume survey of the flora of Britain, with contributions by specialists in particular genera. The two volumes that saw publication were of a very high standard, but the project was subsequently abandoned.
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Collingwood Ingram
1880 - 1981 (101 years)
Collingwood "Cherry" Ingram , was a British ornithologist, plant collector and gardener, who was an authority on Japanese flowering cherries. Personal life Collingwood Ingram was a son of Sir William Ingram and Mary Eliza Collingwood , daughter of Australian politician Edward Stirling. His maternal grandfather was born in Jamaica to a Scottish planter and an unnamed woman of colour. He concealed his racial identity and later settled in South Australia, where he was elected to parliament; his sons Lancelot and Edward Charles Stirling were also members of parliament.
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Nils Svedelius
1873 - 1960 (87 years)
Prof Nils Eberhard Svedelius ForMemRS HFRSE was a Swedish botanist. He was an expert on marine algae. Biography He was born in Stockholm on 5 August 1873 the second son of Carl Svedelius LLD , a senior judge in the Supreme Court of Justice, and his wife, Ebba Katarina Skytte, from the family of Skytte of Satra. In 1914 he married Lisa Thegerstrom . He died on 2 August 1960.
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Maurice Cole Tanquary
1881 - 1944 (63 years)
Maurice Cole Tanquary was a professor of entomology, a member of the Crocker Land Expedition and is considered to be a pioneer in modern beekeeping. Early life Tanquary was the son of Thomas J. and Florence A. Tanquaary. He was born and raised in Lawrenceville, Illinois, grew up on a farm and attended local public schools. He furthered his education at Vincennes University, where he played an active role in the Tau Phi Delta society, contributing to its initial constitution and by-laws. In 1903, he graduated from Vincennes University and subsequently taught at Lawrence County's public schools for four years.
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Arthur White Greeley
1875 - 1904 (29 years)
Arthur White Greeley was an American physiologist and ichthyologist. Greeley was born in Oswego, New York, the eldest of two sons of Frank Norton Greeley, a Congregational clergyman, and Anna Cheney Greeley. His brother William would go on to become chief forester of the U.S. Forest Service. He graduated from Stanford University in 1898, and spent one year as a graduate student in zoology, during which he went to Alaska with the fur-seal expedition and to Brazil with the Banner-Agassiz expedition, where he made most of the biological collections. The following year he was an instructor at San Diego Normal School , leaving there to enter the University of Chicago as fellow in physiology.
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Thomas Borgmeier
1892 - 1975 (83 years)
Thomas Borgmeier was a German-Brazilian priest and entomologist and became a specialist on the ants of Brazil and on the flies in the family Phoridae. He was also the founder of the journals Revista de Entomologia edited it from 1931 to 1951 and the Studia Entomologica from 1958.
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Hermann Dürck
1869 - 1941 (72 years)
Hermann Ludwig Friedrich Franz Dürck was a German pathologist and histologist. He studied under Otto Bollinger at the University of Munich and with Hans Chiari at Prague, obtaining his doctorate in Munich in 1892. In 1897 he received his habilitation in pathological anatomy and bacteriology, attaining the title of associate professor in 1902. In 1909 he relocated to the institute of pathology in Jena as a full professor, followed by a directorship at the pathological institute at Rechts der Isar Hospital in Munich . In 1919 he became an honorary professor at the University of Munich.
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C.B. Williams
1889 - 1981 (92 years)
Carrington Bonsor Williams FRS better known as C. B. Williams or just "C.B." to friends was an English entomologist and ecologist. He contributed to studies on insect migration, statistical approaches to ecology and biogeography.
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Knud Jessen
1884 - 1971 (87 years)
Knud Jessen was a Danish botanist and quaternary geologist. Biography Jessen was born at Frederiksberg, Denmark. He was a student at the University of Copenhagen and was awarded cand.mag. in natural history and geography with botany as a major in 1911.
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Iwao Taki
1901 - 1984 (83 years)
Iwao Taki was a Japanese malacologist. He described many taxa of Mollusca with Isao Taki , Tadashige Habe and Tokubei Kuroda. Life Iwao Taki was born on 19 June 1901 in Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture. On the suggestion of his brother, Isao Taki, he entered in 1920. He graduated and worked at as a teacher in 1924. The next year, he entered Department of zoology, Faculty of Science, Kyoto Imperial University. In 1928, he graduated and worked in Seto Marine Biological Laboratory. He returned to Kyoto in August, and he founded The Malacological Society of Japan , and was involved in publishing the journal "Venus".
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David Lester
1916 - 1990 (74 years)
David Lester was an American biochemist who did extensive studies of alcoholism and was a professor at Rutgers University. Life and career He was scientific director of the Center of Alcohol Studies after it moved to Rutgers in 1962. From 1940 to 1980, he was an editorial board member of the Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol , based at the Center for Alcohol Studies.
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Jovan Hadži
1884 - 1972 (88 years)
Jovan Hadži was a Slovenian zoologist of Serbian origin. Biography Hadži was born in a Serbian family in Temišvar in what was then Austria-Hungary. He began his career in Zagreb. In 1920, he moved to Ljubljana where he became the head of zoological institute at the then established University of Ljubljana. Between 1951 and 1972, Hadži was the head of the Biological institute at Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts . In 1938, he became a full member of SASA.
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Calvin Henry Kauffman
1869 - 1931 (62 years)
Calvin Henry Kauffman was an American botanist and mycologist. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he was affiliated with the University of Michigan from 1904 until his death, and was known for his studies of the family Agaricaceae.
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Nikolai Cholodny
1882 - 1953 (71 years)
Mykola Hryhorovych Kholodny was an influential microbiologist who worked at the University of Kyiv, Ukraine in the USSR during the 1930s. He is known for the Cholodny–Went model, which he developed independently with Frits Warmolt Went of the California Institute of Technology. Despite being associated with the same theory, the two men never actually met.
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