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,
#19651
Elias Tillandz
1640 - 1693 (53 years)
Elias Tillandz was a Swedish-born doctor and botanist who worked in Finland. He was the professor of medicine at the Academy of Turku. He wrote the country's first botanical work, the Catalogus Plantarum, which was first published in 1673. As a doctor he also prepared medicines for his patients by using his extensive knowledge of plants.
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Mary Alice Willcox
1856 - 1953 (97 years)
Mary Alice Willcox was an American zoologist and professor at Wellesley College. Early life and education In 1856, Mary was born in Kennebunk, Maine, the eldest of three children of the congregational minister William H. Willcox and his wife Annie Holmes née Goodenow. Theirs was a distinguished family in Maine; her great grandfather, John Holmes, was one of the state's first senators, while her grandfather, Daniel Goodenow, was justice of the Supreme Court of Maine. Her brother, Walter Francis Willcox, became professor of economics and statistics at Cornell University.
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Chiara Cirelli
#19654
Hermann Voss
1894 - 1987 (93 years)
Christian Heinrich Emil Hermann Voss was a German anatomist. Well known as a medical academic and textbook author he was also notorious for his experiments during the Third Reich. Early life The son of a manor lessee, Voss was born in Berlin but raised in Warnkenhagen and Malchin. He studied variously at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Heidelberg University and the University of Rostock before completing his doctorate in 1919, including a spell away from study in the army during the First World War as an army doctor.
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James Eric Smith
1909 - 1990 (81 years)
Sir James Eric Smith, CBE, FRS was a British zoologist. He was educated at Hull Grammar School and King's College London where he read zoology. He was Professor of Zoology at Queen Mary University of London from 1950 to 1965. He was awarded the Linnean Gold Medal in 1971. He was awarded the Frink Medal of the Zoological Society of London in 1981. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1958. He was made a CBE in 1972 and knighted in 1977.
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Karl McKay Wiegand
1873 - 1942 (69 years)
Karl McKay Wiegand was an American botanist who headed the Department of Botany at Cornell University for 28 years. He was a member of the Botanical Society of America and served as its president in 1939.
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Joseph Dalton Sir Hooker
#19658
Jean Feldmann
1905 - 1978 (73 years)
Jean Feldmann was a French biologist, specialising in marine algae. Biography Jean Feldmann was born on 25 June 1905 in Paris. He initially studied pharmacy, gaining his first degree in 1929, before turning his attentions to marine algae. In 1933, he took up a position as an assistant at the University of Algiers, where he also completed his doctorate in 1937, married his assistant, Geneviève Mazoyer, in 1938, and rose to professor in 1948. The couple moved to Paris when Jean took up a position at the institution that became the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, where they remained until his retirement in 1976.
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D. Avid G. Ainley
#19660
Francis Balfour-Browne
1874 - 1967 (93 years)
William Alexander Francis Balfour-Browne FRSE FZS FLS PRMS , known as Frank, was an English entomologist who specialised in Coleoptera, especially Dytiscidae . Life and work Balfour-Browne was born at 16 Ebury Street in London to John Hutton Balfour-Browne KC and Caroline Lush.
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Hermann Weyland
1888 - 1974 (86 years)
Hermann Gerhard Weyland was a German chemist and botanist. In collaboration with Richard Kräusel, he carried out significant paleobotanical investigations of Devonian flora. He obtained his education at the University of Jena, receiving his doctorate in 1912 under the direction of Christian Ernst Stahl. Following graduation, he worked as assistant to Wilhelm Pfeffer at the University of Leipzig and under Ludwig Knorr in Jena. From 1915 to 1952 he worked as a chemist at Bayer in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, being named head of its physiology laboratory in 1924. In 1931 he became an honorary professor ...
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Robert E. Schmidt
#19663
Wilmatte Porter Cockerell
1870 - 1957 (87 years)
Wilmatte Porter Cockerell was an American entomologist and high school biology teacher who discovered and collected a large number of insect specimens and other organisms. She participated in numerous research and collecting field trips including the Cockerell-Mackie-Ogilvie expedition. She wrote several scientific articles in her own right, co-authored more with her husband, Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell, and assisted him with his prolific scientific output. She discovered and cultivated red sunflowers, eventually selling the seeds to commercial seed companies. Her husband and her entomologi...
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Jack Lamont Mclachlan
#19665
Jules-Auguste Béclard
1817 - 1887 (70 years)
Jules–Auguste Béclard was a French physiologist born in Paris. He was the son of anatomist Pierre Augustin Béclard . In 1842 he earned his doctorate in Paris, where he later became a professor of physiology to the Faculté de Médecine. From 1862 to 1872 he was secrétaire annuel to the Académie Nationale de Médecine, where from 1873 to 1887 he served as secrétaire perpétuel.
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George Golding. Kennedy
#19667
Heneage Gibbes
1837 - 1912 (75 years)
Heneage Gibbes was a British pathologist known for his histological studies. He moved to the United States where he served as a professor of pathology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Gibbes was born in Berrow, Somerset, where his namesake father was a minister while his mother Margaretta was the daughter of John Murray, an admiral in the Royal Navy. His paternal great-grandfather, Sir George Smith Gibbes was physician extraordinary to Queen Charlotte while his maternal grandfather John Murray was an Admiral in the Royal Navy. At the age of fourteen, he rebelled against his father's...
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Elmar Leppik
1898 - 1978 (80 years)
Elmar Emil Leppik, earlier Lepik was an Estonian mycologist and theoretical biologist. He established a mycological herbarium and library at the University of Tartu. His birth date in 1898 has been given variously as 3 or 4 October or as 3 December, he died 4 November 1978 in Maryland.
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Arthur Meyer
1850 - 1922 (72 years)
Arthur Meyer was a German botanist, cell biologist, and pharmacognosist. Meyer is known for his pioneering work describing the structure of chloroplasts and other plastids. He was the first to name and describe the chlorophyll-containing structures in chloroplasts known as grana.
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Thomas F. Goreau
1924 - 1970 (46 years)
Thomas Fritz Goreau was a marine biologist who worked extensively on the coral reefs of Jamaica, and many other reefs in the Pacific, Caribbean, and Red Sea. Career Goreau moved from Germany to Austria at the age of 8, and lived in France and the United States, where he studied at Clark University, The University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and received his Ph.D in ecology from Yale University. In 1951 he went to lecture at the medical school at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, and in 1956 he founded a long-term research project exploring the coral reefs of Jamaica.
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Friedrich Siegmund Voigt
1781 - 1850 (69 years)
Friedrich Siegmund Voigt was a German zoologist and botanist, with a special interest in spermatophytes. He taught at Jena, where he translated Georges Cuvier's Le Règne Animal , and was the director of the Jena Botanical Gardens and the Museum of Zoology.
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Katherine a. Siminovitch
#19673
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
#19675
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
#19686
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
#19691
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
#19693
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
#19698
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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