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,
#20001
Fredrik Elfving
1854 - 1942 (88 years)
Fredrik Emil Volmar Elfving was a Swedish-speaking Finnish botanist, plant physiologist, and university administrator. During his university training, he frequently traveled abroad to learn new scientific methods and techniques from other prominent European scientists. Although his earliest publications dealt with phytogeography and phycology , his most notable research was in plant physiology. Early in his career, he published seminal work on the flow of water through the stems of woody plants, and investigated the phenomenon of transversely geotropic plant organs. In contrast to his works o...
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Abdul Karim
1922 - 1973 (51 years)
Abdul Karim was a widely published Bangladeshi soil scientist. Education and career Karim passed the matriculation examination in 1939 from Homna High School and Higher Secondary School Certificate examination in 1942 from Dhaka College. He obtained BS and MS degrees in chemistry from University of Dhaka in 1945 and 1946 respectively. He lectured in this field at the same university. A UNESCO fellowship enabled him to obtain a PhD in soil science at the University of Adelaide. After receiving a doctorate there in 1951 he returned to Dhaka University's newly formed Department of Soil Science, ...
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Kathleen Bever Blackburn
1892 - 1968 (76 years)
Kathleen Bever Blackburn, was a British botanist best remembered for the 1923 discovery that plant cells have sex chromosomes. Her principal contributions were in plant cytology and genetics. She was also a pioneer of pollen analysis. She taught botany at Armstrong College, Durham University from 1918 to 1957.
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Mathilde Lange
1888 - 1972 (84 years)
Mathilde Margarethe Lange was an American biologist known for her research in experimental embryology. She was born in New York City and her father was a physician and surgeon. She attended the University of Zurich and earned her Ph.D. in 1920. She was employed by the United States Department of Agriculture for the first year following her Ph.D. as a researcher. Lange then moved to Wheaton College, Massachusetts as a professor of zoology, where she remained until her retirement in 1950. Her professional memberships included the New York Academy of Growth and the Genetic Association.
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Carrie Adeline Barbour
1861 - 1942 (81 years)
Carrie Adeline Barbour was an American paleontologist and educator. As an assistant curator of paleontology at the University of Nebraska State Museum and an Assistant Professor of Paleontology, Barbour was among the earliest women paleontologists in the United States.
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Sergei Sergeyevich Sheglejev
1820 - 1859 (39 years)
Sergei Sergeyevich Shchegléiev was a Russian botanist, Ph.D. in botany, and associate professor at the Department of Botany at the National University of Kharkiv. He was a taxonomist specialist of the family Epacridaceae, with an emphasis on Leucopogon. He regularly published in the Bulletin of the Société Impériale des Naturalistes de Moscou.
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Nikolai Kuznetsov
1864 - 1932 (68 years)
Nikolai Kuznetsov was a botanist. 1905–1911 he was the president of Estonian Naturalists' Society. He has described over 30 plant taxa, including:Cynanchum albowianum Kusn., Fl. Caucas. Crit. iv. I. 445 Cynanchum boissieri Kusn., Fl. Caucas. Crit. iv. I. 455 Cynanchum funebre Kusn., Fl. Caucas. Crit. iv. I. 461
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Rudolf Arndt
1835 - 1900 (65 years)
Rudolf Gottfried Arndt was a German psychiatrist from Bialken, district of Marienwerder. Biography Arndt studied in Greifswald and Halle. As a student, his instructors included Felix von Niemeyer , Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben , and Heinrich Philipp August Damerow . He was conferred doctor of medicine on 20 February 1860. From 1861 he maintained a private practice, and also participated in the Second Schleswig War , Austro-Prussian War and Franco-Prussian War .
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John Claudius Loudon
1783 - 1843 (60 years)
John Claudius Loudon was a Scottish botanist, garden designer and author. He was the first to use the term arboretum in writing to refer to a garden of plants, especially trees, collected for the purpose of scientific study. He was married to Jane Webb, a fellow horticulturalist, and author of science-fiction, fantasy, horror, and gothic stories.
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Robert A. Gilbert
1870 - 1942 (72 years)
Robert Alexander Gilbert was an African-American nature photographer. Gilbert was a helper and field assistant to ornithologist William Brewster from 1896 or 1897 until Brewster's death in 1919 and was later employed at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. His photographic work while employed by Brewster went uncredited until the publication of a book-length biography on Gilbert by John Hanson Mitchell, Looking for Mr. Gilbert: The Unlikely Life of the First African American Landscape Photographer.
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Julia Warner Snow
1863 - 1927 (64 years)
Julia Warner Snow was an American botanist and was known in the scientific community for her work as a systematic phycologist. Snow was born in La Salle, Illinois, the third child of Norman G. Snow and Charlotte D. . At the age of sixteen she left La Salle to enter Hungerford Collegiate Institute, Adams, New York. After graduating in 1880, she returned home to live with her parents, then in 1884 matriculated to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. While an undergraduate, she joined the Kappa Alpha Theta fraternity. When the Sigma Xi honor society was formed at Cornell in 1886, Julia joined along with fellow Theta Anna Botsford Comstock.
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Holger Valdemar Brøndsted
1893 - 1977 (84 years)
Holger Valdemar Brøndsted was a Danish zoologist, teacher and writer. He earned his first degree from Aarhus University, and then studied natural sciences at the University of Copenhagen. This led to his working as an assistant to Professor Johan Erik Vesti Boas at the Agricultural University's zoological laboratory, as both a teacher and researcher. Following his marriage in 1919, he went to work at Birkerød State School in 1920, initially working as a part-time teacher, but 1921 as an assistant professor. This led to his writing several popular biology books. While teaching, he resumed his ...
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Ida Shepard Oldroyd
1856 - 1940 (84 years)
Ida Shepard Oldroyd was an American conchologist and Curator of Geology at Stanford University for over 20 years, who curated what was for a time the second largest collection of mollusk shells in the world. Oldroyd and her husband, Tom Shaw Oldroyd, amassed one of the largest private shell collections in California. Ida was recognized as an active and early pioneer of conchology in the western United States. She was a charter member of the American Malacological Union, of which she served as vice-president in 1934 and as honorary president from 1935 to 1940.
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Charles Mercier
1851 - 1919 (68 years)
Charles Arthur Mercier was a British psychiatrist and leading expert on forensic psychiatry and insanity. Biography Mercier was born on 21 June 1851. He studied medicine at the University of London where he graduated. He worked at Buckinghamshire County Asylum in Stone, near Aylesbury. He became the Assistant Medical Officer at Leavesden Hospital and at the City of London Asylum in Dartford, Kent. He also worked as a surgeon at the Jenny Lind Hospital. He was the resident physician at Flower House, a private asylum in Catford. In 1902 became a lecturer in insanity at the Westminster Hospital Medical School.
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Cornelius Becker Philip
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Cornelius Becker Philip was an American entomologist, noted for assigning comedic names to species he described. Works Philip, C.B. 1931. The Tabanidae of Minnesota. With special reference to their biologies and taxonomy. Technical Bulletin of the Agricultural Experimental Station, University of Minnesota 80, 132 pp., 4 pls.Philip, C.B. 1936. New Tabanidae with notes on certain species of the longus group of Tabanus. Ohio Journal of Science36: 149-156.Philip, C.B. 1936. The furcatus group of western North American flies of the genus Chrysops . Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington 37[1935]: 153-161.
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Helen Riaboff Whiteley
1921 - 1990 (69 years)
Helen Riaboff Whiteley was a microbiologist who spent most of her research career at the University of Washington. Early life and education Whiteley was born in 1921 to Russian parents in Harbin, China. The family immigrated to the United States in 1924, first settling in Washington and later moving to California. Whiteley studied microbiology at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her B.S. in 1941. She then earned a master's degree from the University of Texas, Galveston and her Ph.D. from the University of Washington, where her husband Arthur Whiteley was at the time an assistant professor of zoology.
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Aleksey Malchevskiy
1915 - 1985 (70 years)
Aleksey Sergeevich Malchevskiy was an ornithologist from the Soviet Union who served as dean of biology at the Leningrad State University from 1969 to 1973. He studied cuckoos, avian behaviour, and calls, and influenced many ornithologists in the Soviet Union. He was a pioneers in examining evolutionary trends in philopatry and post-natal dispersal in birds.
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Karl Wilmanns
1873 - 1945 (72 years)
Franz Karl Heinrich Wilmanns was a Mexican-born German psychiatrist who founded the Heidelberg school of psychopathology. In 1933, Wilmanns was fired from Heidelberg University for political reasons.
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Bernhard Fischer
1852 - 1915 (63 years)
Johann Friedrich Bernhard Fischer was a German bacteriologist noted for his classification system for bacteria. Biography After attending Casimirianum from 1862 to 1871, he was educated at the University of Berlin, received the degree of M.D. in 1875, and went to Egypt and India as member of the German Cholera Commission. In 1889, he was a member of the Plankton Expedition and 10 years later became professor at the University of Kiel. There he also became head of the Institute of Hygiene. He became generally known for his classification of bacteria. His Structure and Functions of Bacteria , w...
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Hugo Theodor Christoph
1831 - 1894 (63 years)
Hugo Theodor Christoph was a German and Russian entomologist. Born in Herrnhut in Saxony, Hugo Theodor Christoph moved to Russia in 1858. He became a member of the Russian Entomological Society in 1861. From 1880, he was curator of the Lepidoptera collection of Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia.
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Giambattista Canano
1515 - 1579 (64 years)
Giambattista or Giovanni Battista Canano was a physician and anatomist, active mainly in his native Ferrara. His aristocratic family, of Greek ancestry, produced a number of physicians and scholars. His father, Ludovico Canano, was a notary. His grandfather was lecturer in medicine at Ferrara and physician at court. The family came to Italy from Greece in the 15th century.
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Wilhelm Leche
1850 - 1927 (77 years)
Wilhelm Leche was a Swedish zoologist who published works on mammals. Jakob Wilhelm Ebbe Gustaf Leche was born in Helsingborgs Maria parish on 4 September 1850. He lived until 29 January 1927, and was interred at the Adolf Fredrik Church in Stockholm.
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Karl Ludwig Fridolin von Sandberger
1826 - 1898 (72 years)
Karl Ludwig Fridolin von Sandberger , German palaeontologist and geologist, was born at Dillenburg, Nassau, on 22 November 1826. He was educated at the universities of Bonn, Heidelberg and Giessen, at the last of which he graduated Ph.D. in 1846. He then studied at the University of Marburg, where he wrote his first essay, Übersicht der geologischen Verhältnisse des Herzogtums Nassau .
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Nora Miller
1898 - 1994 (96 years)
Agnes Eleanora Miller FRSE was a Scottish zoologist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Life She was born in Dunipace in central Scotland on 7 September 1898, the eldest daughter of William Douglas Miller and his wife Agnes Cameron Adam, a singer and pianist who studied under Sir Hubert Parry. In 1906, the family moved to 57 Kirklee Road in Glasgow.
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Dow Baxter
1898 - 1965 (67 years)
Dow Vauter Baxter was an American mycologist. He was an authority on wood-decay fungi, especially the polypores. Baxter was a professor of forest pathology at the University of Michigan, where he started employment in 1926. The fungus Rhizopogon baxteri was named in Baxter's honor.
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Johann Schnitzler
1835 - 1893 (58 years)
Johann Schnitzler was an Austrian Jewish laryngologist and professor. He was the father of Arthur Schnitzler. Life and work Johann Schnitzler, son of a carpenter, was a native of Nagykanizsa in Hungary . He studied medicine at the universities of Budapest and Vienna, where in 1860 he earned his medical doctorate and from 1863 to 1867 worked as an assistant to Johann von Oppolzer . He habilitated for percussion, auscultation and illnesses of respiratory organs in 1864. Schnitzler was among the founders of the Vienna General Policlinic in 1872 and became head of its laryngological department. I...
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Mamoru Oguma
1885 - 1971 (86 years)
#20028
Alberto Ascoli
1877 - 1957 (80 years)
Alberto Ascoli was an Italian serologist, hygienist and physiological chemist, who developed a test for anthrax. External links http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/250.html
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Alexander Stoddart Wilson
1854 - 1909 (55 years)
Alexander Stoddart Wilson was a Scottish minister of the Free Church of Scotland who was also a scientist, serving as interim Professor of Botany at Glasgow University. Life He was born in Glasgow in 1853. He was the son of Alexander Wilson Free Church minister of Bridgeton.
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Edward Claudius Herrick
1811 - 1862 (51 years)
Edward Claudius Herrick was an American librarian and scientist. He was the first full-time librarian at Yale University. Early life and education He was the youngest child of Rev. Claudius Herrick, a much respected teacher in New Haven, Connecticut, and Hannah Herrick. He was born in New Haven, on what is now a part of the Yale College square. After a good preliminary education, of which the College course did not form a part, he was Engaged as a clerk in the well known book-store of Gen. Hezekiah Howe, where excellent opportunities were afforded him to gratify his early thirst for knowledge.
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Burton Orange Longyear
1868 - 1969 (101 years)
Burton Orange Longyear was an American botanist, forester, and mycologist, specializing in the fungi of Michigan. He was also a gem cutter. Biography Born on a farm in Ingham County, Michigan, Burton Longyear moved, at the age of 18, with his parents and brother to Mason, Michigan, the county seat of Ingham County. He clerked in a pharmacy owned by his brother and eventually became a registered pharmacist. In 1890 he enrolled to study botany and chemistry at the State Agricultural College of Michigan, which was renamed Michigan Agricultural College in 1909 and Michigan State University in 1964.
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Natalya Osadcha-Yanata
1891 - 1982 (91 years)
Natalya Tikhonovna Osadcha-Yanata was a Ukrainian botanist and folklorist noted for studying the medicinal plants of Ukraine and publishing some of her works in English. She was married to Ukrainian botanist Alexander Yanata.
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Julius Lederer
1821 - 1870 (49 years)
Julius Lederer was an Austrian entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera. He travelled widely: to Andalusia in 1849 Carinthia with Johann von Hornig in 1853, İzmir in 1864, Magnesia in 1865, Amasya and Turkey in 1866, Mersin and the Taurus Mountains in 1867, Lebanon in 1868 and the Balkans in 1870
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Otto Staudinger
1830 - 1900 (70 years)
Otto Staudinger was a German entomologist and a natural history dealer considered one of the largest in the world specialising in the collection and sale of insects to museums, scientific institutions, and individuals.
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Martha Bunting
1861 - 1944 (83 years)
Martha Bunting was an American biologist and teacher. Biography Bunting became the first president of the Beta Alpha chapter of the national Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority at the University of Pennsylvania, the first sorority at the university in March 1890.
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William Forster Lanchester
1875 - 1953 (78 years)
William Forster Lanchester was a British zoologist. Life He was born in Croydon on 14 March 1875 to Dr Henry Thomas Lanchester MD and his wife Catherine Forster. He was one of eight children, but the only son. In 1893 he was admitted to Cambridge University. He studied Science and graduated BA in 1897 and gained an MA in 1900. He went on to work as a Demonstrator in Zoology at University College, Dundee.
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Samuel Ramírez Moreno
1898 - 1951 (53 years)
Samuel Ramírez Moreno was a Mexican physician and psychiatrist. He served as a professor and rector at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Education Ramírez began his studies at the American School and received his undergraduate degree in 1907 at the National Preparatory School. He joined the National School of Medicine in 1918, earning the title in 1924.
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Kálmán Lambrecht
1889 - 1936 (47 years)
Kálmán Lambrecht was a Hungarian palaeontologist, best known for his work on fossil birds. He authored the “Handbuch der Palaeornithologie”, an exhaustive review of fossil birds published in 1933. Positions held include librarianship of the Geological Survey of Hungary. He died of heart failure in Budapest.
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Arturo Donaggio
1868 - 1942 (74 years)
Sir Arturo Donaggio was an Italian physician specialized in psychiatry and professor at University of Turin, Modena and Bologna. Donaggio was a defender and a supporter of the cure for alienated people in mental hospital and he was a follower of the positivistic doctrine related to physiology and mental pathology.
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Elaine Diacumakos
1930 - 1984 (54 years)
Elaine Diacumakos was an American cell biologist and head of the cytobiology laboratory at Rockefeller University. She developed the first techniques for removing and inserting material into and from cells.
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Eugène Lafont
1837 - 1908 (71 years)
Eugène Lafont, S.J. , was a Belgian Jesuit priest, who became a missionary in India, where he became a noted scientist and the founder of the first Scientific Society in India. Formation and early years He was born in Mons, where his father, Pierre Lafont, a military officer, was stationed. After secondary studies in the Jesuit Collège de Sainte-Barbe in his town, in 1854 Lafont was received into the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, located in the former Norbertine Abbey of Tronchiennes in Ghent. He then went through the usual Jesuit formation, spending his period of Regency teaching in Jes...
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Friedrich Meggendorfer
1880 - 1953 (73 years)
Friedrich Meggendorfer was a German psychiatrist and neurologist. Life Born in Bad Aibling, Bavaria, he was intended to take over the local colonial goods store of his ancestors. He enjoyed an excellent international education aimed at preparing him for this role. However, his life's goal has always been to become a physician, and finally, he had persuaded his father to agree and to sponsor medical studies. During World War I he was stationed in Turkey as a medical assistant of the German imperial navy. There he learnt much about the Turkish culture and was able to translate ancient Arabic m...
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Alphonse Boistel
1836 - 1908 (72 years)
Alphonse Barthélémy Martin Boistel was a French law professor, who performed research in the fields of geology and lichenology. He studied law at Collège Rollin and at the University of Paris, obtaining his law degree in 1864. From 1865 to 1870 he served as a professor to the faculty of law at Grenoble, then afterwards returned to Paris, where he was a professor of commercial law and civil law .
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Jonathan Stanton
1834 - 1918 (84 years)
Jonathan Stanton was an ornithologist and longtime professor of Greek and Latin at Bates College, a librarian and a supporter of the debate program. Career A native of Lebanon, Maine, USA, and an 1856 graduate of Bowdoin College, Stanton studied law from 1856 to 1857 and became a teacher at the New Hampton School in New Hampshire from 1857 to 1858. He studied at Andover Theological Seminary from 1858 to 1861. He was the principal of the Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire, from 1861 to 1863. He then went to Bates College where his brother, Levi, had been teaching.
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Joseph Sugar Baly
1816 - 1890 (74 years)
Joseph Sugar Baly was an English doctor and entomologist. Born in Warwick where he would also die, Baly was a specialist in Coleoptera: Phytophaga. His collection is in the Natural History Museum, London. One of the many species he described was Stethopachys formosa.
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Thomas Nicol
1900 - 1983 (83 years)
Prof Thomas Nicol FRSE FRCS FRCSE was a 20th-century Scottish anatomist. He is remembered for his research on Beta-estradiol. He was Professor of Anatomy at King's College, London from 1936 to 1967. He was affectionately known as Tommy Nicol.
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Lazare Garreau
1812 - 1892 (80 years)
Lazare Garreau was a French botanist, pharmacist and military physician. Garreau established through experimentation that plants could absorb water through leaves. He also examined plant respiration and nutrition.
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Maurice O'Connor Drury
1907 - 1976 (69 years)
Maurice O'Connor Drury was a psychiatrist and follower of Ludwig Wittgenstein born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, England of Irish parents. He grew up in Exeter, Devon, England, where his father, Henry D'Olier Drury, who had been a teacher in Marlborough college, retired.
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Hilda Rosene Lund
1897 - 1978 (81 years)
Hilda Florence Rosene Lund was an American plant physiologist. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1939 for her work on measuring water absorption by roots. Early life and education Hilda Florence Rosene was born in 1897 in Chicago, Illinois. She moved with her family to Washington State in 1900, and grew up on a dairy farm in the Snoqualmie Valley. She graduated from Lincoln High School in Seattle, before earning a teacher's diploma at Western Washington College of Education in 1917. She pursued an interest in marine science through an undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in 1922, and earned a master's degree there as well in 1924.
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William Stebbins Barnard
1849 - 1887 (38 years)
William Stebbins Barnard was an American biologist. Barnard was born on in Canton, Illinois. He studied at Canton High School, University of Michigan, Cornell University , University of Leipsic, and at the University of Jena . In 1870 he accompanied the scientific exploring expedition to Brazil as assistant geologist. On his return from Europe he lectured in 1874 at Cornell University, and during the summer at the school on Penikese Island. Since then he has lectured on natural history at Mississippi Agricultural College ; Illinois teachers' summer school ; Wisconsin State Normal School ; Oskaloosa College ; Cornell University ; and Drake University .
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