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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Biology,
#2601
Thomas F. Anderson
#59314
Overall Influence
1911 - 1991 (80 years)
Thomas Foxen Anderson was an American biophysical chemist and geneticist who developed crucial techniques for using electron microscopes. Anderson pioneered use of the electron microscope to study viruses. His research produced insights of how viruses infect cells, methods of their reproduction and how they alter the cells they infect.
Go to Profile#2602
Sophie Scott
#27720
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Sophie Kerttu Scott is a British neuroscientist and Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow at University College London . Her research investigates the cognitive neuroscience of voices, speech and laughter particularly speech perception, speech production, vocal emotions and human communication. She also serves as director of UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Go to Profile#2603
Michel Goedert
#70146
Overall Influence
#2604
Uta Francke
#62077
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Uta Francke is a German-American physician-geneticist known for her accomplishments in mapping genes to specific chromosome locations and discovering the genes and underlying mutations responsible for Prader-Willi and Rett syndromes. Her work on detailed mapping of human chromosome laid the foundation of the Human Genome Project and discovery of many other rare genetic disorders. She is currently a professor of Genetics and Pediatrics Emerita at Stanford University. She has also served as a consultant to 23andMe Inc since 2007, and as a part-time employee from 2010-2013.
Go to Profile#2605
Willem Meindert de Vos
#70151
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Willem M. de Vos is a Dutch academic and microbiologist. He studied for his PhD at the University of Groningen. He is notable for winning the Spinozapremie in 2008. De Vos is currently serving as an Academy Professor for the Academy of Finland.
Go to Profile#2606
Robert Rush Miller
#39003
Overall Influence
1916 - 2003 (87 years)
Robert Rush Miller "was an important figure in American ichthyology and conservation from 1940 to the 1990s." He was born in Colorado Springs, earned his bachelor's degree at University of California, Berkeley in 1938, a master's degree at the University of Michigan in 1943, and a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1944. He received tenure at the University of Michigan in 1954.
Go to Profile#2607
Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara
#58837
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara is an Italian marine conservation ecologist who has bridged the worlds of marine science, conservation and policy. Education and early career Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara's interest in marine life grew out of a lifelong love of the sea. His ancestors were mariners and his father was a founder of the Centro Velico Caprera, which honed Giuseppe's interest in Italy's marine environs and focused his childhood fascination with animals towards protecting marine life.
Go to Profile#2608
Aaron Novick
#34226
Overall Influence
1919 - 2000 (81 years)
Aaron Novick is considered one of the founders of molecular biology. He started the University of Oregon's Institute of Molecular Biology, believed to be the first of its kind in the world, in 1959.
Go to Profile#2609
Victoria Arbour
#52312
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (40 years)
Victoria Megan Arbour is a Canadian evolutionary biologist and vertebrate palaeontologist at Royal BC Museum, where she is Curator of Palaeontology. An "expert on the armoured dinosaurs known as ankylosaurs", Arbour analyzes fossils and creates 3-D computer models. She named the possible pterosaur Gwawinapterus from Hornby Island, and a partial ornithischian dinosaur from Sustut Basin, British Columbia , and has participated in the naming of the ankylosaurs Zuul, Zaraapelta, Crichtonpelta, and Ziapelta.
Go to Profile#2610
Patrice L. Nordmann
#70250
Overall Influence
#2611
Nancy Wexler
#15233
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Nancy Wexler FRCP is an American geneticist and the Higgins Professor of Neuropsychology in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, best known for her involvement in the discovery of the location of the gene that causes Huntington's disease. She earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology but instead chose to work in the field of genetics.
Go to Profile#2612
Roy Crowson
#59337
Overall Influence
1914 - 1999 (85 years)
Roy Albert Crowson was an English biologist who specialised in the taxonomy of beetles. He lectured at the Zoology Department of the University of Glasgow from 1949. He collected beetles and their larvae from around the world and studied the relationships between them. His 1955 monograph, The natural classification of the families of Coleoptera, established a system for the classification of beetles that remains in use.
Go to Profile#2613
Theo Wallimann
#60880
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Theo Wallimann is a Swiss biologist who was research group leader and Adjunct-Professor at the Institute of Cell Biology ETH Zurich and later at the Institute of Molecular Health Science at the ETH Zurich at the Biology Department, of the ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
Go to Profile#2614
Felix Tretter
#25238
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Felix Tretter is an Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist. From 1992 to 2014 he was head of the addiction department of the Isar-Amper-Klinikum München-Ost, formerly known as Bezirkskrankenhaus Haar, Bavaria, Germany. His scientific work has emphasis on modelling of psychophysical scenarios in schizophrenia and addiction research with methods of systems science.
Go to Profile#2615
Eric John Hewitt
#56791
Overall Influence
1919 - 2002 (83 years)
Eric John Hewitt FRS was a British plant physiologist who pioneered the study of plant nutrition in the 20th century. He is commonly known for compiling the nutrient recipes for the Long Ashton Nutrient Solution in his landmark book on sand and water culture methods, first published in 1952 and revised in 1966.
Go to Profile#2616
Benoît Roux
#26247
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Benoît Roux is an Amgen Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the University of Chicago. He has previously taught at University of Montreal and Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Benoît Roux was a recipient of the 1998 Rutherford Memorial Medal in Chemistry, awarded by the Royal Society of Canada.
Go to Profile#2617
Tony Pawson
#69281
Overall Influence
1952 - 2013 (61 years)
Anthony James Pawson was a British-born Canadian scientist. Biography Born in Maidstone, England, the son of the sportsman and writer Tony Pawson, and botanist and high-school teacher Hilarie, he was the eldest of three children. He was educated at Winchester College and Clare College, Cambridge, where he received an MA in biochemistry followed by a PhD from King's College London in 1976. From 1976 to 1980 he pursued postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1981 to 1985, he was Assistant Professor in microbiology at the University of British Columbia.
Go to Profile#2618
Thomas J. Silhavy
#68236
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Thomas J. Silhavy is the Warner-Lambert Parke-Davis Professor of molecular biology at Princeton University. Silhavy is a bacterial geneticist who has made fundamental contributions to several different research fields. He is best known for his work on protein secretion, membrane biogenesis, and signal transduction. Using Escherichia coli as a model system, his lab was the first to isolate signal sequence mutations, identify a component of cellular protein secretion machinery, discover an integral membrane component of the outer membrane assembly machinery, and to identify and characterize a two-component regulatory system.
Go to Profile#2619
Jean-Jacques Hublin
#27767
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Areas of Specialization: Evolutionary Anthropology, Paleoanthropology Jean-Jacques Hublin is a paleoanthropologist, president of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution, and a professor of anthropology at Leiden University, Max Planck Society, and the Leipzig University. He is also founder and director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology’s Department of Human Evolution. Originally from Algeria, Hublin studied geology and paleontology at Pierre and Marie Curie University, where he earned his doctorate. He went on to earn a state doctorate at the University of Bordeaux.
Go to Profile#2620
Michel Haïssaguerre
#26922
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Michel Haïssaguerre is a French cardiologist and electrophysiologist. His investigations have been the basis for development of new markers and therapies for atrial and ventricular fibrillation. Biography Haïssaguerre was born in Bayonne, France. He became a Professor of Cardiology in 1994. His present position is Chief of the Cardiac Pacing and Electrophysiology department at the Haut–Lévèque Cardiology Hospital, part of the Bordeaux University Hospital Community. He was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 2010.
Go to Profile#2621
Julius Youngner
#34516
Overall Influence
1920 - 2017 (97 years)
Julius S. Youngner was an American Distinguished Service Professor in the School of Medicine and Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at University of Pittsburgh responsible for advances necessary for development of a vaccine for poliomyelitis and the first intranasal equine influenza vaccine.
Go to Profile#2622
John M. Kane
#65024
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
John M. Kane is an American psychiatrist who served as the Chair of Psychiatry at the Zucker Hillside Hospital for 34 years. He also served as the Chair of Psychiatry at The Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell for its first 12 years. He stepped down from these roles in 2022 to focus his efforts on his research and mentorship of early career investigators as Co-Director, Institute of Behavioral Science at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, part of Northwell Health.
Go to Profile#2623
Rudolf Vrba
#6828
Overall Influence
1924 - 2006 (82 years)
Rudolf Vrba was a Slovak-Jewish biochemist who, as a teenager in 1942, was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. He escaped from the camp in April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and co-wrote the Vrba-Wetzler report, a detailed report about the mass murder taking place there. Distribution of the report by George Mantello in Switzerland is credited with having halted the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in July 1944, saving more than 200,000 lives. After the war, Vrba trained as a biochemist, working mostly in England and Canada.
Go to Profile#2624
Leah Keshet
#32868
Overall Influence
Leah Edelstein-Keshet is an Israeli-Canadian mathematical biologist. Edelstein-Keshet is known for her contributions to the field of mathematical biology and biophysics. Her research spans many topics including sub-cellular biology, ecology, and biomedical research, with particular focus on cell motility and the cytoskeleton, modeling of physiology and diseases, such as autoimmune diabetes, and swarming and aggregation behavior in social organisms.
Go to Profile#2625
Madeline Lancaster
#62055
Overall Influence
Madeline Lancaster is an American developmental biologist studying neurological development and diseases of the brain. Lancaster is a group leader at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK.
Go to Profile#2626
Donald F. Klein
#44550
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Donald Franklin Klein was an American psychiatrist known for his work on anxiety disorders. From 1976 until his emeritate in 2006, he was professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York and medical director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Go to Profile#2627
Werner Greuter
#58898
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Werner Rodolfo Greuter is a botanist. He is the chair of the Editorial Committee for the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature - the Tokyo Code and the St Louis Code . His proposed policy as regards registration of botanical names proved unpopular and in 1999 he stepped back, not being elected anew: he completed his term as chair to be succeeded at Vienna in 2005. He has returned as a member of the editorial committee, contributing to the renamed International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, the "Melbourne Code" .
Go to Profile#2628
Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath
#27423
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath is an Indian neuroscientist. She is currently a professor at the Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. She was the founder director of the National Brain Research Centre, Gurgaon and founder chair of the Centre for Neuroscience at Indian Institute of Science. Her main area of interest is the study of brain related disorders including neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. She serves as the founding director of the Centre for Brain Research in Bangalore.
Go to Profile#2629
Lee Ming-liang
#26069
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Lee Ming-liang is a Taiwanese geneticist who led the Department of Health from 2000 to 2002. After Lee left office, Taiwan was hit by the 2003 SARS outbreak, and he was named to a committee convened to research the disease.
Go to Profile#2630
Russell Poldrack
#45543
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Russell "Russ" Alan Poldrack is an American psychologist and neuroscientist. He is a professor of psychology at Stanford University, associate director of Stanford Data Science, member of the Stanford Neuroscience Institute and director of the Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience and the SDS Center for Open and Reproducible Science.
Go to Profile#2631
Éric Karsenti
#38576
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Éric Karsenti is a French biologist. Research Director at the CNRS, he was the scientific director of the Tara Oceans expedition. Biography After a thesis at the Pasteur Institute , he worked as a researcher on the molecular mechanisms that govern the cell cycle. He created the Department of Cellular Biology and Biophysics of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory .
Go to Profile#2632
Susan Mango
#35810
Overall Influence
Susan E. Mango is an American biologist, the former H.A. and Edna Benning Professor of Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah, and former professor at Harvard University. She is Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and research group leader at Biozentrum University of Basel
Go to Profile#2633
Stephen J. Galli
#66102
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Stephen Joseph Galli is an American pathologist who researches mast cells and basophils. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a recipient of the National Institutes of Health MERIT Award, and former co-editor of the Annual Review of Pathology: Mechanisms of Disease.
Go to Profile#2634
Diana Wall
#61258
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Diana Harrison Wall is the founding director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability, a distinguished biology professor, and senior research scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. She is an environmental scientist and a soil ecologist and her research has focussed on the Antarctic McMurdo Dry Valleys. Wall investigates ecosystem processes, soil biodiversity and ecosystem services and she is interested in how these are impacted by global change. The Wall Valley was named after her in recognition of her research in the McMurdo Dry Valleys....
Go to Profile#2635
Maurice Moloney
#50394
Overall Influence
Professor Maurice M. Moloney is a research biologist and biotechnology businessman. He is the former Executive Director and CEO of the Global Institute for Food Security at the University of Saskatchewan, which he left late in 2018. At the Global Institute for Food Security, Moloney more than doubled the funding for the Institute including the award of $37.2 million, the largest Federal research grant ever received by the University of Saskatchewan. Between December 2013 to October 2014 he was Group Executive, Food, Health and Life Science Industries, for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation .
Go to Profile#2636
Mary Eleanor Power
#70543
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Mary Eleanor Power is Professor of the Graduate School in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Power is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the California Academy of Sciences. She holds an honorary doctorate from Umeå University, Sweden, and is a recipient of the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography , and the Kempe Award for Distinguished Ecologists .
Go to Profile#2637
Deborah Doniach
#39817
Overall Influence
1912 - 2004 (92 years)
Deborah Doniach MD FRCP was a British clinical immunologist and pioneer in the field of autoimmune diseases. Early and personal life Deborah Abileah was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on 6 April 1912 to Russian parents. Her father, Arieh Abileah , of Jewish descent, was a concert pianist and music teacher; her mother, Fée Héllès, of Russian-German descent , ran a novel dance school in Paris. The family moved frequently during Deborah's childhood, living at various times in Paris, Vienna and Italy.
Go to Profile#2638
Hampton L. Carson
#45377
Overall Influence
1914 - 2004 (90 years)
Hampton Lawrence Carson was an eminent American biologist best known for his work on the chromosomes of new species of the fruit fly Drosophila and his contributions to our understanding of their evolution.
Go to Profile#2639
Adrian Hayday
#67309
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Adrian Clive Hayday is the Kay Glendinning professor and chair in the Department of Immunobiology at King's College London and group leader at the Francis Crick Institute in the UK. Education Hayday was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in natural sciences in 1978. He went on to complete his PhD in molecular virology of Polyomaviridae at Imperial College London in 1982.
Go to Profile#2640
David L. Wagner
#37787
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
David L. Wagner is an entomologist and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Caterpillars of Eastern North America, widely regarded as one of the most authoritative field guides on caterpillars. He also serves as an advisor for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection.
Go to Profile#2641
Susan S. Taylor
#58534
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Susan Taylor is an American biochemist who is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego. She is known for her research on protein kinases, particularly protein kinase A. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1996.
Go to Profile#2642
Osvaldo Reig
#57426
Overall Influence
1929 - 1992 (63 years)
Osvaldo Alfredo Reig was an Argentine biologist and paleontologist. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He made numerous contributions in the fields of paleontology and biological evolution. He studied at the Universidad de La Plata, but did not complete his studies. Later he worked at the University of Buenos Aires in the Department of Biological Sciences working with the biological evolution of mammals. In 1966 he began work at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He worked for almost fifteen years at the Central University of Venezuela and the Simón Bolívar University.
Go to Profile#2643
Margaret Leinen
#45545
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Margaret Leinen is an American paleoceanographer and paleoclimatologist. In 2013, Leinen was appointed the 11th director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as well as the dean of the School of Marine Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. She founded the Climate Response Fund, a non-profit focused on enabling better understanding, regulation and responsible use of climate engineering research, and served as its president for a time. For two years, Leinen also worked as chief science officer for a startup company in green technology and climate change mitigation.
Go to Profile#2644
Marco Vannini
#70273
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Marco Vannini is Professor of Invertebrate Zoology at the Department of Evolutionary Biology L. Pardi of the University of Florence. He has been the Director of the above Department from 1989 to 1992 and the Director of the Museum of Zoology of the University of Florence, from 1992 to 2003. He is member of the coordination board of Doctorate in Ethology and Ecology, at the University of Florence, member of the Centre for the Study of Tropical Faunistics and Ecology of CNR, from 1970 to 2003. He is the author of about 120 papers on international journals of zoology, ethology, marine biology a...
Go to Profile#2645
Rudolf Raff
#60534
Overall Influence
1941 - 2019 (78 years)
Rudolf Albert Raff was an American biologist, and James H. Rudy Professor of Biology at Indiana University. He was known for research in, and promotion of, evolutionary developmental biology. He was also director of the Indiana Molecular Biology Institute.
Go to Profile#2646
Maharani Chakravorty
#50427
Overall Influence
1937 - 2015 (78 years)
Maharani Chakravorty was an Indian molecular biologist. She organized the first laboratory course on recombinant DNA techniques in Asia and Far East in 1981. Early life Chakravorty was born in 1937 in Kolkata. She cultivated an interest in science and mathematics due to the influence of her maternal grandfather. She matriculated in 1950, graduated with a B.Sc from Presidency College, Kolkata, obtained her M.Sc from the prestigious Rajabazar Science College, University of Calcutta and a PhD from the Bose Institute, Kolkata.
Go to Profile#2647
Carol A. Barnes
#44438
Overall Influence
Carol A. Barnes is an American neuroscientist who is a Regents' Professor of psychology at the University of Arizona. Since 2006, she has been the Evelyn F. McKnight Chair for Learning and Memory in Aging and is director of the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute. Barnes has been president of the Society for Neuroscience and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and foreign member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.
Go to Profile#2648
Virginia Walbot
#70630
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Virginia Walbot is an American agriculturalist and botanist who is a professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University. She investigates maize development with a focus on factors involved in male sterility.
Go to Profile#2649
Michel Jouvet
#8276
Overall Influence
1925 - 2017 (92 years)
Michel Valentin Marcel Jouvet was a French neuroscientist and medical researcher. His works, and those of his team, have brought about the discovery of paradoxical sleep and to its individualisation as the third state of functioning of the brain , to the discovery of its phylogenesis, of its ontogenesis and its main mechanisms. Jouvet was the researcher who first developed the analeptic drug Modafinil.
Go to Profile#2650
Pamela Matson
#29625
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
