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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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#2701

William H. Fishman

#71725

Overall Influence

#2702

Barry Brook

#31562

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Barry William Brook is an Australian scientist. He is an ARC Australian Laureate Professor and Chair of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Tasmania in the Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology. He was formerly an ARC Future Fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide, Australia, where he held the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change from 2007 to 2014. He was also Director of Climate Science at the Environment Institute.

#2703

Adelina Barrion

#62742

Overall Influence

1951 - 2010 (59 years)

Adelina Adato Barrion was a Filipino entomologist and geneticist whose extensive contribution to the study of Philippine spiders earned her the moniker "Asia's Spider Woman," although she also contributed significantly to the study of other species, and to the study of genetics in general.

#2704

Cornelis Christiaan Berg

#58333

Overall Influence

1934 - 2012 (78 years)

Cornelis Christiaan Berg was a Dutch botanist known for his work on the plant family Moraceae. Early life and education Berg was born on 7 February 1934 in Bandung, Indonesia, then part of the Dutch East Indies, and later moved to Sumatra, near Medan. During World War II, his father was conscripted, and died during the Japanese conquest. Berg was interned with his mother and brothers, and moved to a men's camp at the age of 10. Berg, his mother and siblings, all survived their internment, but his mother died of starvation shortly after. After the war, the orphaned siblings were raised with f...

#2705

Gianvito Martino

#56830

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Gianvito Martino is an Italian neuroscientist. Life and work A native of Bergamo, Martino studied medicine and neurology at Pavia University and carried out periods of study and research at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and at the University of Chicago.

#2706

Anita Hoffmann

#64901

Overall Influence

1919 - 2007 (88 years)

Ana Esther Hoffmann Mendizábal , also known as Anita Hoffmann, was a Mexican researcher, educator, academic, and biologist specializing in acarology and parasitology. She was a pioneer in the study of arachnids and acari in Mexico. She founded the Instituto Politécnico Nacional's Laboratory of Acrology in 1965, the first in Latin America, and another at the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1977.

#2707

David Rimoin

#34532

Overall Influence

1936 - 2012 (76 years)

David Lawrence Rimoin was a Canadian American geneticist. He was especially noted for his research into the genetics of skeletal dysplasia , inheritable diseases such as Tay–Sachs disease, and diabetes.

#2708

Wesley R. Elsberry

Wesley R. Elsberry

#33841

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Wesley Royce Elsberry is a data scientist with an interdisciplinary background in marine biology, zoology, computer science, and wildlife and fisheries sciences. He also became notably involved in the defense of evolutionary science against creationist rejection of evolution.

#2709

Hermona Soreq

#45165

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Hermona Soreq is an Israeli professor of Molecular Neuroscience at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Best known for her work on the signaling of acetylcholine and its relevance in stress responses and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

#2710

Wladek Minor

#70060

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Władysław Minor also known as Wladek Minor is a Polish-American biophysicist, a specialist in structural biology and protein crystallography. He is a Harrison Distinguished Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics at the University of Virginia. Minor is a co-author of HKL2000/HKL3000 – crystallographic data processing and structure solution software used to process data and solve structures of macromolecules, as well as small molecules. He is a co-founder of HKL Research, a company that distributes the software. He is also a co-author of a public repository of diffraction im...

#2711

Bill Hill

#66988

Overall Influence

1940 - 2021 (81 years)

William George Hill was an English geneticist and statistician. He was a professor at University of Edinburgh. He is credited as co-discoverer of the Hill–Robertson effect with his doctoral advisor, Alan Robertson.

#2712

W. King Engel

#71874

Overall Influence

#2713

Warren Gish

#35533

Overall Influence

Warren Richard Gish is the owner of Advanced Biocomputing LLC. He joined Washington University in St. Louis as a junior faculty member in 1994, and was a Research Associate Professor of Genetics from 2002 to 2007.

#2714

Arthur Peacocke

#12398

Overall Influence

1924 - 2006 (82 years)

Arthur Robert Peacocke was an English Anglican theologian and biochemist. Biography Arthur Robert Peacocke was born in Watford, England, on 29 November 1924. He was educated at Watford Grammar School for Boys, Exeter College, Oxford , and the University of Birmingham .

#2715

Ray Guillery

#55171

Overall Influence

1929 - 2017 (88 years)

Rainer Walter "Ray" Guillery FRS was a British physiologist and neuroanatomist. He is best known for his discovery that in Siamese catss with certain genotypes of the albino gene, the wiring of the optic chiasm is disrupted, with less of the nerve-crossing than is normal.

#2716

Timothy Bliss

#51894

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Timothy Vivian Pelham Bliss FRS is a British neuroscientist. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, and a group leader emeritus at the Francis Crick Institute, London. In 2016 Professor Tim Bliss shared with Professors Graham Collingridge and Richard Morris the 2016 Brain Prize, one of the world's most coveted science prizes.

#2717

Quentin Gibson

#43549

Overall Influence

1918 - 2011 (93 years)

Quentin Howieson Gibson FRS was a Scottish American physiologist, and professor at the University of Sheffield, and Cornell University. Education Gibson earned a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1944 and a Ph.D. in 1946, from Queen's University Belfast.

#2718

Paolo Sassone-Corsi

#65296

Overall Influence

1956 - 2020 (64 years)

Paolo Sassone-Corsi was an Italian molecular biologist, epigeneticist, and researcher. He is known for his contributions in the areas of transcriptional regulation, epigenetics, circadian biology, and metabolic regulation. He is known for his contributions in the areas of transcriptional regulation, epigenetics, circadian biology, and metabolic regulation. His research primarily focused on the mechanisms that regulate transcription and their relation to metabolism and circadian clocks. His work focused on understanding how the circadian clock regulates metabolic cycles. Most notably, he disco...

#2719

Thomas Anthony Harris

#11375

Overall Influence

1910 - 1995 (85 years)

Thomas Anthony Harris was an American psychiatrist and author who became famous for his self-help manual I'm OK, You're OK . The book was a bestseller and its name became a cliché during the 1970s.

#2720

Olumbe Bassir

#18678

Overall Influence

1919 - 2001 (82 years)

Olumbe Bassir was a Nigerian scientist, author and academic. His primary contributions to research were in the areas of aflatoxins, nutrition, and peace research. Early life and education Born in Senegal to Sierra Leonean Oku parents in 1919, Olumbe Bassir was raised in Fourah Bay area, in the municipality of Freetown, by his parents Abdul and Isatu Bassir. He attended the Prince of Wales Secondary School where he passed the Senior Cambridge examination with exemption from London matriculation. In 1946, after a short teaching spell at the prestigious Bo Government Secondary School, he attended to Yaba College where he obtained the Higher National Diploma.

#2721

R. Tecwyn Williams

#72137

Overall Influence

#2722

Sally Satel

#8140

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Sally L. Satel is an American psychiatrist based in Washington, D.C. She is a lecturer at Yale University School of Medicine, a visiting professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and an author.

#2723

Mary Sears

#20796

Overall Influence

1905 - 1997 (92 years)

Mary Sears was a Commander in the United States Naval Reserve and an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution . Early life and education Mary Sears was born on July 18, 1905, to Leslie and Edmund Sears in Wayland, Massachusetts. She was the oldest child, and had a younger brother and sister. In 1911, Leslie died from polio when she was 28-years-old. After his wife's death, Edmund moved to Europe and left his children in the care of relatives and nannies. During this time, one of their caretakers was their mother's friend, Sophie Bennett, who was a teacher at The Winsor School in Boston, Massachusetts.

#2724

Lawrence Steinman

#65615

Overall Influence

Lawrence Steinman is an immunologist and neurologist professor of pediatrics at Stanford University. Since 2015, he has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

#2725

Gerald J. Gleich

#72206

Overall Influence

#2726

Charles T. Esmon

#72250

Overall Influence

#2727

J. Whitfield Gibbons

#54959

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

J. Whitfield "Whit" Gibbons is an American herpetologist, author, and educator. He is Professor Emeritus of Ecology, University of Georgia, and former Head of the Environmental Outreach and Education program at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory .

#2728

Rasmus Nielsen

#66066

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Rasmus Nielsen is a Danish biologist and professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on statistical genetics and computational genomics as they relate to evolutionary biology. Much of his research has focused on the molecular mechanisms of evolutionary adaptations. For example, in 2010, his research group discovered the variant in the EPAS1 gene that allows Tibetanss to live at high altitudes. His research has also identified an evolved genetic adaptation among the Inuit that allows them to metabolize fatty acids.

#2729

Renato Baserga

#72295

Overall Influence

#2730

W. Ann Reynolds

#5177

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Wynetka Ann Reynolds is an American zoologist and university administrator who has served as provost of the Ohio State University , chancellor of the California State University system , chancellor of the City University of New York , and president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham . She is the only person to have headed two of the three largest systems of higher education in the United States. The universities she has led account for 6 of the top 10 U.S. schools in upward mobility for their students.

#2731

George Eman Vaillant

George Eman Vaillant

#14076

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

George Eman Vaillant is an American psychiatrist and Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of Research for the Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Vaillant has spent his research career charting adult development and the recovery process of schizophrenia, heroin addiction, alcoholism, and personality disorder. Through 2003, he spent 30 years as Director of the Study of Adult Development at the Harvard University Health Service. The study has prospectively charted the lives of 724 men and women for over 60 years.

#2732

Eva Harris

#34864

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Eva Harris is a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder and president of the Sustainable Sciences Institute. She focuses her research efforts on combating diseases that primarily afflict people in developing nations.

#2733

Cornelius Herman Muller

#59454

Overall Influence

1909 - 1997 (88 years)

Cornelius Herman Muller, born Müller, was an American botanist and ecologist who pioneered the study of allelopathy and oak classification. Personal life Müller was born in Collinsville, Illinois, but moved at an early age to Cuero, Texas, and was educated there. He was graduated with a BA in botany from the University of Texas in 1932, and an MA from the same institution in 1933. He first married Mary Elizabeth Taylor, but they divorced in 1936; he changed his name to Muller in the following year.

#2734

David Karl

#56886

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

David Michael Karl is an American microbial biologist and oceanographer. He is the Victor and Peggy Brandstrom Pavel Professor of Microbial Oceanography at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and the Director of the University Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education.

#2735

Zdeněk Veselovský

Zdeněk Veselovský

#53311

Overall Influence

1928 - 2006 (78 years)

Zdeněk Veselovský was one of the most important Czech zoologists of the 20th century, founder of Czech ethology, director of the Prague Zoo and the president of the International Union of Directors of Zoological Gardens He was born in Jaroměř and died in 2006, aged 74, in Prague. In November 2008, he received the Minister of the Environment Award in memoriam "for his lifelong work in the field of zoology and ethology and for his admirable activity in activities involved in the conservation of animal species and the promotion of zoos as educational institutions."

#2736

Sebastian Bonhoeffer

#60715

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Sebastian Bonhoeffer is a German biologist at the ETH Zürich and Principal of the Collegium Helveticum. Life and Works Bonhoeffer studied cello in Basel under Heinrich Schiff and physics in Munich und Vienna. In 1995, he did his doctorate with Martin A. Nowak under Robert May at the Institute of Zoology at the University of Oxford on the population dynamics and evolution of viral diseases. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford and Rockefeller University. In 1998, he was appointed junior group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel....

#2737

Alan Schatzberg

#18046

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Alan F. Schatzberg is an American psychiatrist. He was the 136th president of the American Psychiatric Association . Since 1991, he has been the Kenneth T. Norris Jr . Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, and he was chair of the department from 1991 to 2010. He has received multiple national and international awards for his work as an investigator in the biology and treatment of depression. He is also the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Psychiatric Research, along with Florian Holsboer. He received an honorary doctorate from the Medic...

#2738

Jon Storm-Mathisen

#54494

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Jon Storm-Mathisen is a highly cited Norwegian neuroscientist known for his work on the morphology and immunocytochemistry of the central nervous system. He is a professor of medicine at the Department of Anatomy at the University of Oslo.

#2739

James Woodgett

#67328

Overall Influence

James Woodgett is a British-born biologist and the Principal Investigator of an active research laboratory at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System , in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was the Koffler Director of Research at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute from November 2005 to January 2021.

#2740

Richard Bonneau

#23125

Overall Influence

Richard Bonneau is an American computational biologist and data scientist whose primary research is in the following areas: learning networks from functional genomics data, predicting and designing protein and peptiodomimetic structure and applying data science to social networks. A professor at New York University, he holds appointments in the department of biology, the Center for Data Science and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

#2741

Seirian Sumner

#55672

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Seirian Sumner FRES is a British entomologist and behavioural ecologist. She is a professor at University College London and is an expert in social wasps. Education and career Sumner was educated at Ysgol Gyfun. Aberaeron, Wales and then at University College London where she was awarded a Bachelor of Science in Zoology and in 1999 was awarded a PhD on Conflicts over reproduction in facultatively eusocial hover wasps'. Her postdoctoral work was with Jacobus Boomsma at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark; she then held fellowships at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and at the Institute of Zoology, London.

#2742

Michael E. Chopp

#72465

Overall Influence

#2743

Tobias Bonhoeffer

#57826

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Tobias Bonhoeffer is a German-American neurobiologist. He is director of the department Synapses – Circuits – Plasticity and current managing director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence . His father, the neurobiologist Friedrich Bonhoeffer, was director at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen.

#2744

Avindra Nath

#48722

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Avindra "Avi" Nath , is a physician-scientist who specializes in neuroimmunology. Nath is a senior investigator, and intramural clinical director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health in the United States. At NINDS, Nath also leads the Section of Infections of the Nervous System and plans to institute a translational research center. He previously served in several research and administrative positions at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

#2745

Leonore Herzenberg

#62445

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Leonore Alderstein "Lee" Herzenberg is an American immunologist, geneticist and professor at Stanford University. Born in New York City, U.S.A., she never received a college degree but studied biology and worked as a researcher alongside her husband Leonard since he began his doctorate at the California Institute of Technology in 1952. At the time, Caltech did not accept women, but although she was registered at Pomona College nearby, Lee was allowed to audit courses and take tests at Caltech.

#2746

Janet E. Mertz

#33080

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Janet E. Mertz is an American biochemist, molecular biologist, and cancer researcher. She is currently the Elizabeth McCoy Professor of Oncology in the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Mertz is best known for disputing Lawrence Summers' 2005 suggestion that women lack the intrinsic aptitude to excel in mathematics at the highest level and for discovering an easy method for joining DNAs from different species. This latter finding initiated the era of genetic engineering whose ramifications form the basis of modern genetics and the biotechnology in...

#2747

Otto Ludwig Lange

#38548

Overall Influence

1927 - 2017 (90 years)

Otto Ludwig Lange was a German botanist and lichenologist. The focus of his scientific work was on the ecophysiology of wild and cultivated plants as well as lichens. He investigated heat, frost and drought resistance of lichens, bryophytes and vascular plants growing under extreme environmental conditions.

#2748

Christine Holt

#49959

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Christine Elizabeth Holt FRS, FMedSci is a British developmental neuroscientist. She has been Professor of Developmental Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, since 2003 and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, since 1997.

#2749

Sabeeha Merchant

#63054

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Sabeeha Sabanali Merchant is a professor of plant biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies the photosynthetic metabolism and metalloenzymes In 2010 Merchant led the team that sequenced the Chlamydomonas genome. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012.

#2750

Anna Marie Pyle

#60213

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Anna Marie Pyle is an American academic who is a Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology and a Professor of Chemistry at Yale University. and an Investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Pyle is the president of the RNA Society, the vice-chair of the Science and Technology Steering Committee at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and previously she served as chair of the Macromolecular Structure and Function A Study Section at the National Institutes of Health.

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