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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential people in Biology,
#20151
Frank E. Buck
1884 - 1970 (86 years)
Frank E. Buck was a Canadian horticulturalist. Biography Frank Ebernezer Buck was born in 1884 in Colchester, England and moved to Canada in 1902. He attended Macdonald College at McGill University and received a Diploma from Cornell University. He then worked at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa. In 1920, he joined the Department of Horticulture at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver as a landscape architect and an Assistant Professor. He planned and created the forest on the UBC campus, including the Botanical Gardens. He retired in 1943 and became Supervisor of Campus Development.
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Doris Mackinnon
1883 - 1956 (73 years)
Doris Mackinnon was a British zoologist. Born in Scotland, her father was a Consular Agent and her mother managed a "women's home". Influenced by Maria Gordon, Mackinnon studied botany and geology at Aberdeen University, graduating in 1906. She received the "Carnegie scholarship", studying abroad for two years before returning to Scotland. She achieved her doctorate from Aberdeen University in 1914, becoming a lecturer at University College, Dundee , in 1916.
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William Leadbetter Calderwood
1865 - 1950 (85 years)
William Leadbetter Calderwood FRSE was a Scottish marine biologist. He served as Director of the Marine Biological Association Laboratory in Plymouth. He was the author of several authoritative works on marine biology. He was a specialist on the life and biology of the salmon.
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James W. H. Trail
1851 - 1919 (68 years)
James William Helenus Trail FRS FLS was a 20th-century botanist who served as Professor of Botany at Aberdeen University from 1877 to 1919. Life He was born in Birsay on the isle of Orkney on 4 March 1851. His father, Rev Samuel Trail, moved to Aberdeen as Professor of Theology in 1868, but James appears to have been sent to Aberdeen somewhat earlier to be educated there. When his father came they lived in the "Divinity Manse". He is earlier thought to have lived with his uncle, Adam Trail a teacher at the North Free Church School, who lived at 5 North Broadford.
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Charlotte Maria King
1864 - 1937 (73 years)
Charlotte Maria King was a botanist, mycologist and agronomist who worked at the Iowa State College Agricultural Experiment Station. Written works Articles Louis Hermann Pammel, Charlotte M. King. 1925. Some New Weeds of Iowa. Circular 98 . Agric. Experiment Station, Iowa State College of Agric. & Mechanic Arts, 16 p. 1925King, Charlotte M. stalk and corn root diseases in Iowa. Agric. Experiment Station, Iowa State College of Agric. and Mechanic Arts, 8 p. 1915King, Charlotte M. Four new fungous diseases in Iowa. Agric. Experiment Station, Iowa State College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, 21 p.
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William Rowan
1891 - 1957 (66 years)
William Rowan FRSC , was a Canadian biologist and ornithologist best known as a founder of photobiology for establishing the link between the length of daylight and bird migration. Rowan was recognized for his findings with the Flavelle Medal in 1946. In 1993, Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley wrote Restless Energy: A Biography of William Rowan, 1891–1957 detailing his life.
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John Warren
1874 - 1928 (54 years)
John Warren was a professor of anatomy at Harvard University, as well as its University Marshal. Warren was the son and great-grandson of Harvard Medical School legends John Collins Warren Jr. and John Collins Warren , and great-great-grandson of Harvard Medical School founder John Warren. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1900.
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Alf Wollebæk
1879 - 1960 (81 years)
Alf Wollebæk was a Norwegian zoologist and curator. Personal life Wollebæk was born in Lier to colonel Sigurd Polidor Wollebæk and his wife Anine Julie Augusta Dahl . His elder brother was jurist and diplomatist Johan Wollebæk . He was married twice; first in 1903 to Agnes Hanssen , and in 1932 to Ruth Jensen .
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Theophil Joachim Heinrich Bienert
1833 - 1873 (40 years)
Theophil Joachim Heinrich Bienert was a Baltic German botanist who lived and worked mainly in Imperial Russia. Life and work Theophil Joachim Heinrich Bienert was born in Kandava, in the Courland Governorate of the Russian Empire , and studied in Jelgava to become an apothecary. In 1858 he moved to Tartu in present-day Estonia and worked there as an assistant to the head of the Botanical Garden there. In 1858-59 he participated in the Russian Geographical Society's scientific expedition to Khorasan. He then stayed in Tartu until 1872, when he moved to Riga and took up a position at Riga Technical University.
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Theodoric Valeton
1855 - 1929 (74 years)
Theodoric Valeton was a Dutch botanist. He studied at the University of Groningen and received his doctorate in 1886. In 1893, he began working at the botanical garden in Bogor, Indonesia and managed its herbarium between 1903 and 1913. Valeton studied Zingiberaceae in Bogor between 1916 and 1919.
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Jean Baer
1902 - 1975 (73 years)
Jean-Georges Baer was a Swiss parasitologist and environmentalist. Born in England, he studied in Neuchâtel, Geneva, and in Paris, where he worked with Charles Joyeux. His book "Ecology of animal parasites" is considered a classic in the field. Baer published more than 250 articles, among them fundamental work on Temnocephalida and on tapeworms.
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Jan B. Jansen
1898 - 1984 (86 years)
Jan Birger Jansen was a Norwegian physician, anatomist and scientist, specializing in brain research. He played an important role in the Norwegian civil resistance during the Second World War. Personal life He was born in Horten as a son of captain James Christian Jansen and Ananda Kristine Jacobsen . In August 1925 in Frederiksvern he married merchant's daughter Helene Sofie Schøning . They had the son Jan K. S. Jansen and daughters Grete Schøning Jansen Kohler and Ingrid Schøning Jansen Murer-Knutzen.
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Hermann Lehmann
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Hermann Lehmann was a German-born British physician and biochemist known for his works on the chemistry and diversity of hemoglobin. Describing about 75 different hemoglobin, he discovered the most number of hemoglobin types than anyone else. He is regarded as one of the founders of molecular anthropology.
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Ernst Georg Pritzel
1875 - 1946 (71 years)
Ernst Georg Pritzel was a German botanist. He is known for his research in the fields of phytogeography and taxonomy. He contributed works on Lycopodiaceae, Psilotaceae and Pittosporaceae to Engler & Prantl’s "Die Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien".
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Axel Gudbrand Blytt
1843 - 1898 (55 years)
Axel Gudbrand Blytt was a Norwegian professor, botanist and geologist. He was the author of a number of books regarding the flora of Norway. Today he is most associated with his role in developing the Blytt-Sernander theory of climatic change.
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Martin Richard Flor
1772 - 1820 (48 years)
Martin Richard Flor was a Norwegian botanist, economist, author and teacher at Christiania Cathedral School and the Royal Frederick University.
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Robert Percival Cook
1906 - 1989 (83 years)
Robert Percival Cook FRSE was an Australian-born biochemist. He advised the UK government on nutritional issues during the Second World War and was considered an expert in the field of nutrition. He played a key role in the development of life sciences at the University of Dundee, with his colleague and fellow biochemist Geoffrey Dutton noting that Cook served the "University very well indeed."
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Karl Gotthelf Lehmann
1812 - 1863 (51 years)
Karl Gotthelf Lehmann was a German physiological chemist. From 1830 he studied medicine at the University of Leipzig, receiving his doctorate in 1835 with a thesis titled De urina diabetica. In 1842 he became an associate professor of medicine at Leipzig, where in 1854 he was named a full professor of physiological chemistry. From 1856 to 1863 he was a professor of general chemistry at the University of Jena.
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Winifred Betts
1894 - 1971 (77 years)
Mary Winifred Aitken was a New Zealand botanist. She was the first female lecturer at the University of Otago. Biography Born in Nelson on 11 May 1894, Betts was the daughter of printer and stationer Alfred George Betts and Ada Betts . Known to friends as Winnie, she was educated at Nelson College for Girls and received her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the University of Otago. On her graduation, she received the National Research Scholarship that was awarded at the university each year, which offered her an income of £100 a year, plus lab expenses, so she could con...
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Charles Lincoln Edwards
1863 - 1937 (74 years)
Charles Lincoln Edwards was an American zoologist. His research included studies of development in reptiles and sea cucumbers, chromosomes of Ascaris roundworms, and taxonomy of sea cucumbers and copepods, naming at least five species of copepods found in sea cucumber body cavities.
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Lynds Jones
1865 - 1951 (86 years)
Lynds Jones was an American naturalist, professor and a pioneer in the field of animal ecology. He introduced academic courses in ornithology and ecology at Oberlin College where he taught for many years. Jones was also the founding editor of the Wilson Bulletin produced by the Wilson Ornithological Club of which he was a member from its inception in 1888.
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Mary Hefferan
1873 - 1948 (75 years)
Mary Hefferan was an American bacteriologist and community leader. She earned her PhD in zoology in 1903 in Chicago. Life and work Mary Hefferan was born in Eastmanville, Ottawa County, Michigan. and graduated from Central High School. She attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees there in 1896 and 1898, respectively. She received her PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1903 with a dissertation on bacteriology.
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Christian Peder Bianco Boeck
1798 - 1877 (79 years)
Christian Peder Bianco Boeck was a Norwegian doctor, zoologist, botanist and mountaineer. He is most associated with his catalog of approved drugs, Pharmacopoea Norvegica and with his studies of trilobites.
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John P. Munson
1860 - 1928 (68 years)
John P. Munson was a Norwegian-American zoologist and educator, known for his research in the development of animal egg and sperm cells, and his textbook Education Through Nature Study. He was professor at Washington State Normal School at Ellensburg from 1899 to 1928, where he served as head of the department of biology.
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Ida Augusta Keller
1866 - 1932 (66 years)
Ida Augusta Keller was an American plant physiologist and teacher in Philadelphia. Early life and family Ida Keller was born in on June 11, 1866 to William Charles Christian and Maria Augusta Keller in Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse, while her parents were visiting their former home. She grew up in Philadelphia, where her father was a physician, and was graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls in 1884.
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Frank A. Beach
1911 - 1988 (77 years)
Frank Ambrose Beach, Jr. was an American ethologist, best known as co-author of the 1951 book Patterns of Sexual Behavior. He is often regarded as the founder of behavioral endocrinology, as his publications marked the beginnings of the field.
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Aureliano Maestre de San Juan
1828 - 1890 (62 years)
Aureliano Maestre de San Juan was a Spanish scientist, histologist, physician and anatomist. He is credited as being one of the first scientists to recognize the disorder known as Kallmann syndrome. He died in 1890, having been blinded in a laboratory accident involving caustic soda two years earlier.
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Vivi Laurent-Täckholm
1898 - 1978 (80 years)
Vivi Laurent-Täckholm was a Swedish botanist and children's book writer, active in Egypt. Early years and education Vivi Laurent-Täckholm was the daughter of Dr. Wilhelm Edvard Laurent and Lilly Jenny Karolina Bergstrand. She was the sister of Torbern Laurent and aunt to Torvard C. Laurent. She studied botany at the University of Stockholm and received her degree in 1921. She traveled to the US from 1921 to 1923. In 1926, she married botany professor Gunnar Täckholm . They moved to Egypt the same year and began work on the flora of Egypt.
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Nathalie A. Desjatova-Shostenko
1889 - 1968 (79 years)
Nathalie A. Desjatova-Shostenko , later Nathalie A. Roussine, was a Russian-French botanist noted for identifying at least 70 species of plants, many in the genus Thymus. Between 1925 and 1930, Natalie Shostenko was a director of Botany Department at Askania-Nova, after 1930 she then directed the Department of Geography at the Ukrainian Institute of Applied Botany. In 1944 she emigrated to France, due to return of the Soviet regime to Ukraine.
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Karl Schnarf
1879 - 1947 (68 years)
Karl Schnarf was an Austrian botanist, known for his research in the field of plant embryology. From 1900 he studied natural sciences at the University of Vienna, where one of his instructors was botanist Richard Wettstein. After graduation, he worked as a schoolteacher at gymnasiums in Iglau and Mariahilf. In 1923 he qualified as a lecturer of systematic botany at Vienna, then in 1931, received the title of associate professor. In 1946 he was named head of the institute of plant physiology at the university.
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Leo Dale Newsom
1915 - 1987 (72 years)
Leo Dale Newsom was an American entomologist and specialist on crop pest management particularly in cotton and soybean cultivation and was known for his approaches to Integrated Pest Management. Newsom's was born in Shongaloo, where his father was a cotton farmer and his mother was a teacher. He went to the local high school and grew up with an interest in dogs and hunting. In 1936 he went to study at the Louisiana Technological University where he became interested in entomology. He moved to Louisiana State University and obtained a BS in 1940 while also becoming a college boxing champion. H...
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Walter R. Gross
1902 - 1974 (72 years)
Walter Robert Gross was a German palaeontologist. During his career, Gross made important studies on prehistoric fishes. He was the graduate mentor to paleontologists Hans-Peter Schultze and Klaus Fahlbusch. The genus Grossopterus was named in Gross' honor by fellow paleontologist Leif Størmer.
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Félix Guignot
1882 - 1959 (77 years)
Félix Guignot was French a physician and entomologist, born 16 November 1882 in Avignon, France. After studying medicine at the University of Montpellier he established a private practice in his hometown of Avignon. He practiced family medicine and Obstetrics. The region around Avignon provided many excellent opportunities to collect water beetles, including large rivers and the Camargue wetlands. His first entomological article, the description of Siettitia avenionensis, was published in 1925 in the Bulletin of the Entomological Society of France. Guignot found the specimen for this descripti...
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Alexander Theodorowicz Batalin
1847 - 1896 (49 years)
Alexander Theodorowicz Batalin , alternatively known as Alexandr Fedorovich Batalin, was a botanist from the Russian Empire. He was the Chief Botanist and Director of the Imperial Botanical Garden in St. Petersburg.
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Karl Bowman
1888 - 1973 (85 years)
Karl Murdock Bowman was a pioneer in the study of psychiatry. From 1944 to 1946 he was the president of the American Psychiatric Association. His work in alcoholism, schizophrenia, and homosexuality is particularly often cited.
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Suksin Lee
1897 - 1944 (47 years)
Suksin Lee was a Korean biochemist and physician. He is considered a pioneer of biochemistry in Korea, having been the first Korean to obtain a Ph.D. and to hold a full-time professorship in that field. His studies of glucose metabolism and the chemical composition of common foods contributed to the scientific analysis of nutrition in the Korean diet.
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Edward Waymouth Reid
1862 - 1948 (86 years)
Edward Waymouth Reid FRS was a British physiologist. Born the fourth son of James, Reid, F.R.C.S.E., E. Waymouth Reid was educated at Sutton Valence Grammar School and then matriculated in 1879 at Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1883. At St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1885 he qualified M.B. and M.R.C.S. and was an assistant electrician there. At St Mary's Hospital he was a demonstrator in physiology from 1885 to 1887 and a lecturer in physiology from 1887 to 1889.
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Endre Bíró
1919 - 1988 (69 years)
Endre Bíró was a Hungarian biochemist whose research findings in the biochemistry of the muscle and muscle contraction found international recognition. Early life Endre Bíró was born on April 19, 1919, into a liberal-minded Hungarian-Jewish family as the second son of Lipót Bíró and Emma Gráber.
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Leo Sheljuzhko
1890 - 1969 (79 years)
Leo Andreyevich Sheljuzhko was a Ukrainian-German entomologist who specialized in Lepidoptera, Rhopalocera. He wrote numerous scientific papers and books on the butterflies and moths of Central Asia, Ukraine, Far East, Caucasus in Russian, Ukrainian, German, and English, and described many new taxa.
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Alexander Anderson
1748 - 1811 (63 years)
Alexander Anderson was a Scottish surgeon, explorer and botanist who worked as Superintendent to the Botanical Garden on the Windward Island of Saint Vincent from 1785 to 1811. Early life and education Born in Aberdeen, Anderson later studied at the University of Edinburgh, where he was tutored by William Cullen and John Hope . Fellow Aberdonian William Forsyth briefly employed him at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, prior to Anderson's emigration to New York in 1774, where he stayed with his brother John, a printer. After a petition was lodged by physicians William Wright and Thomas C...
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Angeliki Panagiotatou
1875 - 1954 (79 years)
Angeliki Panagiotatou was a Greek physician and microbiologist. She was the first woman physician in modern Greece to have graduated from a University in Greece . Life Born in Greece, Panagiotatou and her sister Alexandra were the first two female students to be accepted in the medical school at Athens University in 1893, after having proved that there were not formal law banning women from attending university in Greece. In 1897, she became he first woman to graduate from the Medical School in Athens.
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Max Auerbach
1879 - 1968 (89 years)
Max Auerbach was a German zoologist known for his research of Cnidospora. From 1897 to 1902, he studied medicine and zoology at the University of Basel, where following graduation, he served as an assistant to Friedrich Zschokke . Soon afterwards, he obtained his habilitation in zoology and anthropology at the Technischen Hochschule Karlsruhe . In Karlsruhe, he gave lectures at the technical school and also at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe .
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Jan van der Hoeven
1801 - 1868 (67 years)
Jan van der Hoeven was a Dutch zoologist. His most famous book is Handboek der Dierkunde , translated into German and English . He wrote as readily about crocodiles as about butterflies, lancelets and lemurs. His research on the nautilus resulted in the discovery of a secondary sexual organ of unknown function which was then named after him as Hoeven's organ or Van der Hoeven's organ.
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Francisco de Ascensão Mendonça
1889 - 1982 (93 years)
Francisco de Ascensão Mendonça was a Portuguese botanist. Further reading
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Alexei Ivanovich Vvedensky
1898 - 1972 (74 years)
Alexei Ivanovich Vvedensky was a Russian botanist. He was an expert on the genera Allium and Tulipa. He carried out extensive explorations of Uzbekistan, and compiled the 1941-1962 'Flora Uzbekistana in conjunction' with R.R. Schreder and E.P. Korovin.
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Harold Leeming Sheehan
1900 - 1988 (88 years)
Harold Leeming Sheehan was a British physician, pathologist, and professor of pathology. Biography Harold Sheehan, whose father was a general practitioner, was the second of thirteen children . After education at Carlisle Grammar School, Harold Sheehan studied medicine at the University of Manchester, graduating MB ChB in 1921. Harold Sheehan began his practice of medicine by joining his elder brother Gerald, who had taken over their father's practice upon the latter's death. Harold Sheehan worked as a general practitioner from 1921 to 1927.
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Louis-Victor Marcé
1828 - 1864 (36 years)
Louis-Victor Marcé was a French psychiatrist. He initially studied medicine in Nantes, afterwards continuing his studies in Paris, where in 1852 he gained his internship. In 1856 he obtained his doctorate with a dissertation on spermatic cysts titled "Des kystes spermatiques ou de l'hydrocèle enkystée spermatique". Shortly afterwards, he served as médecin-adjoint to Jules Baillarger and Jacques-Joseph Moreau at a maison de santé in Ivry-sur-Seine. In 1860 he received his agrégation to the medical faculty in Paris, and during the same year, worked as chief medical officer at "Ferme Sainte-Anne".
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Adolf Pansch
1841 - 1887 (46 years)
Adolf Pansch was a German anatomist and naturalist. Since 1860 he studied medicine and natural sciences in Berlin and Heidelberg, and from 1862 to 1864 he studied medicine in Berlin and Halle. After graduation, he served as a prosector in the anatomical museum at the University of Kiel, where in 1866 he began work as a lecturer to the faculty of medicine.
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Johann Heinrich von Heucher
1677 - 1746 (69 years)
Johann Heinrich von Heucher was a German physician and botanist. Biography Born in Vienna, his family moved to Wittenberg when he was twelve. He studied philosophy first, then medicine at the Universities of Wittenberg, Leipzig and Jena. Doctor of Medicine in 1700, he began to practice the medical profession; for a time he also taught philosophy at the University of Wittenberg. From 1709 he was professor of medicine in the same university .
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Morrison Watson
1846 - 1885 (39 years)
Prof Morrison Watson FRS FRSE FRCPE was a 19th-century Scottish anatomist and comparative anatomist. Life Watson was born in Montrose in 1845. He was educated at the Edinburgh Institution, going on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he took the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1867. He then undertook postgraduate studies at Berlin and Vienna .
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