Search People Result | Academic Influence

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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#2351

Martin Lindauer

#44290

Overall Influence

1918 - 2008 (90 years)

Martin Lindauer was a German behavioral scientist. Lindauer studied communication systems in various species of social bees including stingless bees and honey bees. Much of his work was done in collaboration with Warwick Kerr in Brazil. Involved with the evolution of bees etymology by re-classifying them from honey bugs.

#2352

Melvin Cohn

#51061

Overall Influence

1922 - 2018 (96 years)

Melvin Cohn was an American immunologist who co-founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. He demonstrated that immunoglobulins and white blood cells interact directly with pathogens to protect the body from infection, and is considered a pioneer in the research of gene regulation.

#2353

Gilbert LaFreniere

Gilbert LaFreniere

#20561

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Gilbert LaFreniere is an American ecological philosopher, active in the study of geology, ecology, and human impact upon nature. Biography Gilbert attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst and earned a Masters of Geology from Dartmouth College before completing a Ph.D in intellectual history from the University of California at Santa Barbara, in 1976.

#2354

Victor Westhoff

#32402

Overall Influence

1916 - 2001 (85 years)

Victor Westhoff was a botanist at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Westhoff published 700 scientific papers on phytosociology and conservation, as well as articles on classical music. He was a member of the International Association for Vegetation Science.

#2355

Jane M. Oppenheimer

#46936

Overall Influence

1911 - 1996 (85 years)

Jane Marion Oppenheimer was an American embryologist and historian of science. Early life, interests, and education Oppenheimer was born in Philadelphia, the only child of James H. Oppenheimer and Sylvia Stern. Her father, a physician, encouraged physical activity: sports at school and a personalized exercise regimen at home. She was tutored in French and piano, and developed a love of classical music, fine food, and travel. Oppenheimer's interests in Art were eclectic. The collection she donated to Bryn Mawr includes jade, ivory, and bronze objects, landscape watercolors, and etchings by Pab...

#2356

Hiroshi Nikaido

#66572

Overall Influence

#2357

Paramjit Khurana

#59932

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Paramjit Khurana is an Indian scientist in Plant Biotechnology, Molecular Biology, Genomics who is presently Professor in the Department of Plant Molecular Biology in the University of Delhi, Delhi. She has received many awards and published more than 125 scientific papers.

#2358

Santiago Schnell

#34599

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Santiago Schnell FRSB FRSC is a scientist and academic leader, currently serving as the William K. Warren Foundation Dean of the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame, as well as a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, and Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics.

#2359

Rüdiger Klein

#64892

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Rüdiger Klein is a German neurobiologist. He is director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence and head of the department Molecules - Signaling - Development. Rüdiger Klein studied biology at the universities of Marburg and Tübingen and at the Juniata College . He gained his PhD at the University of Tübingen and worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the National Cancer Institute at Frederick and at the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute . Afterwards, he led a junior research group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. In 2001, ...

#2360

Arthur D. Hasler

#44595

Overall Influence

1908 - 2001 (93 years)

Arthur Davis Hasler was an ecologist who is credited with explaining the salmon's homing instinct. Hasler was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The New York Times called him "an internationally recognized authority on freshwater ecology". He served as President of The Ecological Society of America, which called him "one of the leading figures in 20th century freshwater ecology". Hasler pioneered a research method based on manipulation of entire lake ecosystems. This method became an instrumental new tool for ecology. He published over ...

#2361

Thomas Cremer

#43708

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Thomas Cremer , is a German professor of human genetics and anthropology with a main research focus on molecular cytogenetics and 3D/4D analyses of nuclear structure studied by fluorescence microscopy including super-resolution microscopy and live cell imaging. Thomas Cremer is the brother of the German physicist Christoph Cremer and Georg Cremer, Secretary General of the German Caritas Association.

#2362

Ken Hill

#46602

Overall Influence

1948 - 2010 (62 years)

Kenneth D. Hill was an Australian botanist, notable for his work on eucalypts, the systematics, evolution and conservation of the genus Cycas, as well as on botanical informatics. He was born in Armidale, New South Wales. He worked with the National Herbarium of New South Wales from 1983 until retiring in 2004. He was also a senior research scientist with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney.

#2363

Ruth Mace

#44193

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Ruth Mace FBA is a British anthropologist, biologist, and academic. She specialises in the evolutionary ecology of human demography and life history, and phylogenetic approaches to culture and language evolution. Since 2004, she has been Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London.

#2364

Samuel O. Freedman

#41589

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Samuel Orkin Freedman, is a Canadian clinical immunologist, professor and academic administrator. In 1965, he co-discovered with Phil Gold the carcinoembryonic antigen, the basis of a blood test used in the diagnosis and management of people with colorectal cancer.

#2365

Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash

#20382

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash is an Iraqi scientist and academic, often demonized as "Mrs. Anthrax" by Anglo-American media for her unproven association with the discontinued Iraqi biological weapons program as a part of the propaganda campaign to justify the Iraq War. Ammash was number 53 on the Pentagon's list of the 55 most wanted, the five of hearts in the deck of most wanted Iraqi playing cards, and the only woman to be featured. She was captured by coalition forces but later released without being charged.

#2366

Sandra Wolin

#38829

Overall Influence

Sandra Lynn Wolin is an American microbiologist and physician-scientist specialized in biogenesis, function, and turnover of non-coding RNA. She is chief of the RNA Biology Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute.

#2367

James C. Paulson

#55914

Overall Influence

James C. Paulson is an American biochemist and biologist known for his work in glycobiology. Career A graduate of MacMurray College and University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign , Paulson was a faculty member and vice-chair of the Department of Biological Chemistry at UCLA School of Medicine from 1978-1990. In 1996, he began working for Cytel Corporation, where he was vice president, chief scientific officer, and member of the Board of Directors.

#2368

Paul Fatt

#44767

Overall Influence

1924 - 2014 (90 years)

Paul Fatt was a British neuroscientist, who was a professor at University College London. With Bernard Katz, he developed the "quantal hypothesis" for neurotransmitters. Personal life Paul married three times: Ione Copplestone with whom he had three children: Michael , Laura , Harriet ; Gertrude Falk with whom he had one child, Ilsa; and Carla Wartenberg fom 1985 till his death.

#2369

Varda Rotter

#66706

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Varda Rotter is a German-born-Israeli cancer researcher. Biography Varda Rotter attended Bar-Ilan University where she studied microbiology for her bachelor's degree and cellular biology for her master's degree . Rotter attended the Weizmann Institute of Science to receive a doctorate in immunology . After completing her studies, Rotter moved to America and became a part of a cancer research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

#2370

Sathyabhama Das Biju

Sathyabhama Das Biju

#45925

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Sathyabhama Das Biju is an Indian amphibian biologist, wildlife conservationist and heads the Systematics Lab at the University of Delhi, Department of Environmental Studies. He is dubbed as the "Frogman of India" by media for his passion for frogs and for bringing fresh fascination for Indian amphibians. In an interview with Sanctuary Asia, he was introduced as "one of the world's foremost amphibian experts".

#2371

Cathy H. Wu

#41218

Overall Influence

Cathy H. Wu is the Edward G. Jefferson Chair and professor and director of the Center for Bioinformatics & Computational Biology at the University of Delaware. She is also the director of the Protein Information Resource and the North east Bioinformatics Collaborative Steering Committee, and the adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Medical Center.

#2372

John Lawton

#59884

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Sir John Hartley Lawton is a British ecologist, RSPB Vice President, President of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, President of The Institution of Environmental Sciences, Chairman of York Museums Trust and President of the York Ornithological Club.

#2373

Job Dekker

#54543

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Job Dekker is a Dutch biologist. Dekker is a professor in the Department of Systems Biology, and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

#2374

Wendy Wintersteen

Wendy Wintersteen

#47536

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Wendy Wintersteen is an American academic administrator serving as the 16th president of Iowa State University. Education Wintersteen received her bachelor's degree in crop protection from Kansas State University in 1978, and began at Iowa State University the next year, working for Iowa State University Extension in eastern Iowa. Wintersteen was one of the first women hired to work in integrated pest management for ISU Extension. She earned a Ph.D in entomology from ISU in 1988.

#2375

Beverley Glover

#62306

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Beverley Jane Glover is a British biologist specialising in botany. Since July 2013, she has been Professor of Plant Systematics and Evolution in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge and director of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

#2376

Daniel E. Koshland Jr.

Daniel E. Koshland Jr.

#38896

Overall Influence

1920 - 2007 (87 years)

Daniel Edward Koshland Jr. was an American biochemist. He reorganized the study of biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and was the editor of the leading U.S. science journal, Science, from 1985 to 1995. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

#2377

Barbara Hibbs Blake

#60007

Overall Influence

1937 - 2019 (82 years)

Barbara Hibbs Blake was an American mammalogist and college professor. Early life Barbara Jo Hibbs was born in Roseburg, Oregon, the daughter of Gordon Reid Hibbs and Marybelle Hauskins Hibbs . Her mother was a nurse. She graduated from Portland State University in 1959, and completed doctoral studies at Yale University in 1967. Her dissertation under entomologist Charles Lee Remington was titled "A comparative study of energy and water conservation throughout the annual cycle in ground dwelling Sciuridae."

#2378

Marthe Vogt

#38186

Overall Influence

1903 - 2003 (100 years)

Marthe Louise Vogt was a German scientist recognized as one of the leading neuroscientists of the twentieth century. She is mainly remembered for her important contributions to the understanding of the role of neurotransmitters in the brain, especially epinephrine.

#2379

Matthew N. Levy

#40222

Overall Influence

1922 - 2012 (90 years)

Matthew Nathan Levy was an American physiologist best known for his research on cardiac physiology and co-writing several textbooks with Robert M. Berne. Levy carried out pioneering research on the relationship between the heart and the autonomic nervous system and was sometimes referred to as "the father of neurocardiology".

#2380

Bruce Hammock

#66745

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Dr. Bruce Hammock is an American entomologist, chemist and toxicologist. He is known for his research regarding improving pest control agents, monitoring and determining the human and environmental health effects of pesticides and in medicine work on the inflammation resolving branch of the arachidonate cascade leading to a drug candidate to treat pain and inflammatory disease. Additionally, he made many advances in U.S. agriculture which led to him receiving the Frasch and Spencer Awards of the ACS and the Alexander von Humboldt Award in Agriculture. His early work tested the basic hypothesis...

#2381

Marian Dawkins

#29750

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Marian Stamp Dawkins is a British biologist and professor of ethology at the University of Oxford. Her research interests include vision in birds, animal signalling, behavioural synchrony, animal consciousness and animal welfare.

#2382

Roberto Esser dos Reis

#56822

Overall Influence

Roberto Esser dos Reis, is a Brazilian ichthyologist, professor and Curator of Fishes at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul. Among other duties, Reis has been working at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, United States. Most of his research as an ichthyologist regards different types of South American catfish. He is also chair for South America of the Freshwater Fish Specialist Group, Species Survival Commission, and advises the IUCN on the biological aspects of the conservati...

#2383

Robert Folger Thorne

Robert Folger Thorne

#41924

Overall Influence

1920 - 2015 (95 years)

Robert F. Thorne was an American botanist. He was taxonomist and curator emeritus at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and professor emeritus at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. His research has contributed to the understanding of the evolution of flowering plants.

#2384

Denise Kirschner

#41468

Overall Influence

Denise Ellen Kirschner is an American mathematical biologist and immunologist whose research topics include granulomas, HIV, tuberculosis, and the mechanisms by which disease pathogens interact with and persist in their hosts. She is a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, and former president of the Society for Mathematical Biology.

#2385

Anny Cazenave

#16549

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Anny Cazenave is a French space geodesist and one of the pioneers in satellite altimetry. She works for the French space agency CNES and has been deputy director of the at Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées in Toulouse since 1996. Since 2013, she is director of Earth sciences at the International Space Science Institute , in Bern .

#2386

Eric J. Nestler

#26912

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Eric J. Nestler is the Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience, Director of the Friedman Brain Institute, and Dean for Academic Affairs at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Chief Scientific Officer of the Mount Sinai Health System. His research is focused on a molecular approach to drug addiction and depression.

#2387

Detlef Schuppan

#47621

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Detlef Schuppan is a German biochemist and physician. He focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of coeliac disease and wheat sensitivity, fibrotic liver diseases and the immunology of chronic diseases and cancer. He is the director of the Institute of Translational Immunology and a professor of internal medicine, gastroenterology, and hepatology at the Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany. He directs the outpatient clinic for coeliac disease and small intestinal diseases. He is also a professor of medicine and a senior visiting scientist at Harvard Medical S...

#2388

Robert Ledley

#12822

Overall Influence

1926 - 2012 (86 years)

Robert Steven Ledley , professor of physiology and biophysics and professor of radiology at Georgetown University School of Medicine, pioneered the use of electronic digital computers in biology and medicine. In 1959, he wrote two influential articles in Science: "Reasoning Foundations of Medical Diagnosis" and "Digital Electronic Computers in Biomedical Science". Both articles encouraged biomedical researchers and physicians to adopt computer technology.

#2389

Maurice Sanford Fox

Maurice Sanford Fox

#52884

Overall Influence

1924 - 2020 (96 years)

Maurice Sanford Fox was an American geneticist and molecular biologist, and professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where he served as department chair between 1985 and 1989. His pioneering investigations of bacterial transformation helped illuminate the mechanisms by which donor DNA enters and is integrated into a host cell. His research also contributed to our understanding of mechanisms of DNA mutation, recombination, and mismatch repair more generally. Ancillary activities include his critical role in the establishment of the Council for a Livable World. He was married to photo researcher Sally Fox, who died in 2006, for over 50 years, and has three sons .

#2390

Patrick Haggard

#63655

Overall Influence

Patrick Neville Haggard, FBA, is a cognitive neuroscientist and academic. He is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. Haggard completed his undergraduate degree at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and then spent a year as a Harkness Fellow at Yale University. He returned to Trinity Hall to complete his PhD, which was awarded in 1991. He then spent three years as a Wellcome Trust prize fellow at the University of Oxford and as a junior research fellow at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1995, he joined UCL as a lecturer, and was promoted to senior lecturer in 1998 and to a readers...

#2391

Hugh Davson

#66982

Overall Influence

#2392

Diane Griffin

#62730

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Diane Edmund Griffin is the university distinguished professor and a professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she was the department chair from 1994-2015. She is also the current vice-president of the National Academy of Sciences. She holds joint appointments in the departments of Neurology and Medicine. In 2004, Griffin was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in the discipline of microbial biology.

#2393

Gerta Keller

#34250

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Gerta Keller is a geologist and paleontologist who contests the Alvarez hypothesis that the impact of the Chicxulub impactor, or another large celestial body, directly caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Keller maintains that such an impact predates the mass extinction and that Deccan volcanism and its environmental consequences were the most likely major cause, but possibly exacerbated by the impact.

#2394

Andrew Pollard

#32129

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Sir Andrew John Pollard is the Ashall Professor of Infection & Immunity at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. He is an Honorary Consultant Paediatrician at John Radcliffe Hospital and the Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group. He is the Chief Investigator on the University of Oxford COVID-19 Vaccine trials and has led research on vaccines for many life-threatening infectious diseases including typhoid fever, Neisseria meningitidis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, streptococcus pneumoniae, pertussis, influenza, rabies, and Ebola.

#2395

Sarah Elgin

#56194

Overall Influence

Sarah C.R. Elgin is an American biochemist and geneticist. She is the Viktor Hamburger Professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is noted for her work in epigenetics, gene regulation, and heterochromatin, and for her contributions to science education.

#2396

Larry Abbott

#36246

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Laurence Frederick Abbott is an American theoretical neuroscientist, who is currently the William Bloor Professor of Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University, where he helped create the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. He is widely regarded as one of the leaders of theoretical neuroscience, and is coauthor, along with Peter Dayan, on the first comprehensive textbook on theoretical neuroscience, which is considered to be the standard text for students and researchers entering theoretical neuroscience. He helped invent the dynamic clamp method alongside Eve Marder.

#2397

Ron Laskey

#58543

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Ronald Alfred Laskey FLSW is a British cell biologist and cancer researcher. Career and research Laskey was the Charles Darwin Professor of Embryology at the University of Cambridge. In 1991, he co-founded the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research Campaign Institute , along with five other senior scientists including Professor Sir John Gurdon. In 2001, he founded the Medical Research Council Cancer Cell Unit in 2001, and was Director of the Unit until 2010. Laskey is also a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.

#2398

Thomas Platts-Mills

Thomas Platts-Mills

#53744

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Thomas Alexander Evelyn Platts-Mills, FRS son of British member of parliament and barrister John Platts-Mills, is a British allergy researcher and director of the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

#2399

Geoffrey L. Smith

#54735

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Geoffrey Lilley Smith FRS FMedSci FRSB is a British virologist and medical research authority in the area of Vaccinia virus and the family of Poxviruses. Since 1 October 2011 he is head of the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge and a principal research fellow of the Wellcome Trust. Before that, he was head of the Department of Virology at Imperial College London.

#2400

Seymour S. Cohen

#44661

Overall Influence

1917 - 2018 (101 years)

Seymour Stanley Cohen was an American biochemist. Cohen was born in Brooklyn, New York in April 1917. He attended City College of New York and his PhD came from Columbia University under the supervision of Erwin Chargaff. In the 1940s he worked on plant viruses and for the Rockefeller Institute. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1945. He is known by his studies with marked of radioactive isotopes, whose results suggested an essential role of DNA in hereditary genetic material. This result would be checked in 1952 by Hershey and Chase.

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