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,
#2901
Eberhard Curio
#66741
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Eberhard Curio was a German ecologist, ethologist, and conservation biologist. He was involved in conservation in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines. Curio was educated in Berlin and went in 1950 to the Free University Berlin. In 1957 he obtained his doctorate. Curio worked in 1957 at Ludwigsburg bird sanctuary and as an assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen. He taught zoology at the University of Tübingen from 1964 to 1967 and joined the faculty of the Ruhr University, Bochum in 1968 becoming a professor in 1971. In 1976 he published The Ethology of Predation.
Go to Profile#2902
Vernon Ahmadjian
#58145
Overall Influence
1930 - 2012 (82 years)
Vernon Ahmadjian was a distinguished professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He specialized in the symbiosis of lichens, and wrote several books and numerous publications on the subject.
Go to Profile#2903
Brian S. Hartley
#57783
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Brian Selby Hartley FRS was a British biochemist. He was Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London from 1974 to 1991. Education Hartley was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1947 followed by a Master of Arts degree in 1952. He moved to the University of Leeds where he was awarded a PhD in 1952 for research supervised by Malcolm Dixon and Bernard A. Kilby.
Go to Profile#2904
Gerhard Meisenberg
#24622
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Gerhard Meisenberg is a German biochemist. As of 2018, he was a professor of physiology and biochemistry at Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica. He is a director, with Richard Lynn, of the Pioneer Fund, which has been described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was, until 2018 or 2019, the editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly, which is commonly described as a white supremacist journal and purveyor of scientific racism.
Go to Profile#2905
André Parent
#67336
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
André Parent, is a Canadian researcher specializing in neurobiology, and Professor Emeritus at Université Laval. Born in Montreal, he attended the Université de Montréal and subsequently earned a PhD in neuroanatomy from Université Laval in 1970. He undertook postdoctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. In 1981, he became a professor at the department of anatomy at Laval University; and between 1985 and 1992, he was the scientific director of the research centre of the Hôpital de l'Enfant-Jésus and the director of the neurobiology laboratory at the faculty of medicine at the university.
Go to Profile#2906
Harvey Cantor
#67872
Overall Influence
Harvey Cantor is an American immunologist known for his studies of the development and immunological function of T lymphocytes. Cantor is currently the Baruj Benacerraf Professor of Immunology and Microbiology at the Harvard Medical School.
Go to Profile#2907
Katherine Ralls
#63431
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Katherine S. Ralls is an American zoologist and conservationist who is Senior Research Zoologist Emerita at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, National Zoological Park. Ralls' research interests are in the behavioral ecology, genetics, and conservation of mammals, both terrestrial and marine. Since 1980, she has focused on conservation biology, especially the genetic problems of small captive and wild populations.
Go to Profile#2908
William Montagna
#74901
Overall Influence
#2909
Carl Safina
#17984
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Carl Safina is an American ecologist and author of books and other writings about the human relationship with the natural world. His books include Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace; Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel; Song for the Blue Ocean; Eye of the Albatross; The View From Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World; and others. He is the founding president of the Safina Center, and is inaugural holder of the Carl Safina Endowed Chair for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University. Safina hosted the PBS series Saving the O...
Go to Profile#2910
Jesse Ausubel
#42338
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jesse Huntley Ausubel is an American environmental scientist and program manager of a variety of global biodiversity and ecology research programs. Ausubel serves as director and senior research associate of the Program for the Human Environment of The Rockefeller University. He was also a science advisor and program manager at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation where his main area of responsibility was supporting basic research in science and technology.
Go to Profile#2911
Menek Goldstein
#74913
Overall Influence
#2912
Anne B. Young
#44888
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Anne Buckingham Young is an American physician and neuroscientist who has made major contributions to the study of neurodegenerative diseases, with a focus on movement disorders like Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease. Young completed her undergraduate studies at Vassar College and earned a dual MD/PhD from Johns Hopkins Medical School. She has held faculty positions at University of Michigan and Harvard University. She became the first female chief of service at Massachusetts General Hospital when she was appointed Chief of Neurology in 1991. She retired from this role and from clinical service in 2012.
Go to Profile#2913
Peter Ridd
#11682
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Peter Vincent Ridd is an Australian physicist, author, and former professor at James Cook University , North Queensland, Australia. Ridd is known for his participation in a media campaign seeking to discredit the science informing the protection of the Great Barrier Reef.
Go to Profile#2914
Anna Tramontano
#66567
Overall Influence
1957 - 2017 (60 years)
Anna Tramontano was an Italian computational biologist and chair professor of biochemistry at the Sapienza University of Rome. From 2011 to 2014 she was a member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council . She was an associate editor for the journal Bioinformatics from 2005 until 2016 editing papers in the area of structural bioinformatics.
Go to Profile#2915
Daniel I. Bolnick
#69129
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Daniel I. Bolnick is an American evolutionary biologist. He is a full professor at the University of Connecticut and editor-in-chief of the journal The American Naturalist. Early life and education Bolnick was born in Durham North Carolina, to Bruce and Doreen Bolnick. His father Bruce was an economics professor and an alumnus of Yale University and was treasurer of the committee that organized Coed Week in the fall of 1968. His mother Doreen was a librarian and is an artist. Bolnick was raised in Durham, North Carolina; Washington, DC; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Reading, Massachusetts, where he became interested in natural history.
Go to Profile#2916
Wayne Sousa
#72920
Overall Influence
Wayne Philip Sousa is a well-known biologist and ecologist. He works at the University of California, Berkeley as a professor and chair of the Department of Integrative Biology. His research in community ecology has been in two broad areas: the role of disturbance in structuring natural communities and the ecology of host-parasite interactions. In his lab, students work alongside Sousa on research topics such as mangrove forest gap regeneration, the demographics of intertidal algae in California, plant invasions in coastal California grasslands, and rainforest seedlings in Ecuador.
Go to Profile#2917
Edith Graef Mcgeer
#75004
Overall Influence
#2918
Antonio Krapovickas
#68364
Overall Influence
1921 - 2015 (94 years)
Antonio Krapovickas was an Argentine agronomist. Krapovickas received a degree in 1948 in agronomic engineering from the University of Buenos Aires and began teaching in 1949 as Professor of Genetics and Systems Botany at the University of Córdoba. He later became Professor of Plant Anatomy at the National University of Tucumán.
Go to Profile#2919
John M. Coates
#52407
Overall Influence
John Coates is a neuroscientist and applied physiologist working on the biology of risk taking. He was until 2016 research fellow in neuroscience and finance at the University of Cambridge. Before that he was a trader on Wall Street, working for Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and running a desk at Deutsche Bank. He developed novel techniques for analyzing and trading tail events such financial crises.
Go to Profile#2920
John H. Edwards
#58664
Overall Influence
1928 - 2007 (79 years)
John Hilton Edwards was a British medical geneticist. Edwards reported the first description of a syndrome of multiple congenital malformations associated the presence of an extra chromosome. The extra chromosome belonged to the E group of chromosomes which consisted of chromosomes 16, 17 and 18. The condition is now known as Edwards syndrome or trisomy 18 syndrome.
Go to Profile#2921
Henrik Kacser
#48825
Overall Influence
1918 - 1995 (77 years)
Henrik Kacser FRSE was a Romanian-born biochemist and geneticist who worked in Britain in the 20th century. Kacser's achievements have been recognised by his election to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1990, by an honorary doctorate of the University of Bordeaux II in 1993.
Go to Profile#2922
Jacques Cohen
#24160
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jacques Cohen is a Dutch embryologist based in New York, U.S. He is currently Director at Reprogenetics LLC, Laboratory Director at ART Institute of Washington at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center , and Scientific Director of R & D at IVF-online.
Go to Profile#2923
Sangwon Suh
#53160
Overall Influence
Sangwon Suh is an American industrial ecologist. Early life and education Suh was born to Kyongja An and Jaeyong Suh in Seoul, South Korea, where he spent his childhood. Suh served the South Korean military and was discharged as a sergeant. Suh completed his Bachelor of Science and Master's degree in environmental engineering from Ajou University in South Korea. Following this, he moved to the Netherlands and enrolled at Leiden University for his PhD.
Go to Profile#2924
Claudio Naranjo
#4439
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Claudio Benjamín Naranjo Cohen was a Chilean-born psychiatrist who is considered a pioneer in integrating psychotherapy and the spiritual traditions. He was one of the three successors named by Fritz Perls , a principal developer of Enneagram of Personality theories and a founder of the Seekers After Truth Institute. He was also an elder statesman of the US and global human potential movement and the spiritual renaissance of the late 20th century. Naranjo authored several books.
Go to Profile#2925
Gene Strandness
#31397
Overall Influence
1928 - 2002 (74 years)
Donald Eugene Strandness was an American physician, university professor, and research scientist. Dr. Strandness, known as Gene, was influential in the development of Doppler ultrasound as a diagnostic tool in vascular medicine, and did research that established much of the clinical grading criteria in the field of vascular ultrasound.
Go to Profile#2926
Jonathan Sprent
#69785
Overall Influence
Professor Jonathan Sprent, , is an Australian immunologist. His research has focused on the formation and activation of T cell leukocytes, and methods to overcome T cell-mediated rejection of transplanted tissue.
Go to Profile#2927
Robert A. Lamb
#59073
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Robert A. Lamb was a British-American virologist. He was the Kenneth F. Burgess Professor at Northwestern University and since 1991, an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. From 1990 to 2016, he was the John Evans Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Northwestern University.
Go to Profile#2928
Douglas Easton
#70052
Overall Influence
Douglas F. Easton FMedSci is a British epidemiologist who conducts research on the genetics of human cancers. He is Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology at the University of Cambridge. He founded Cambridge's Cancer Research UK Genetic Epidemiology Unit in 1995, and was a Principal Research Fellow there from 2001 to 2011. He is a Professorial Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#2929
Cindy Lee Van Dover
#48911
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Cindy Lee Van Dover is the Harvey Smith Professor of Biological Oceanography and chair of the Division of Marine Science and Conservation at Duke University. She is also the director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory. Her primary area of research is oceanography, but she also studies biodiversity, biogeochemistry, conservation biology, ecology, and marine science.
Go to Profile#2930
Fritz Bach
#65890
Overall Influence
1934 - 2011 (77 years)
Fritz Heinz Bach was an Austrian-born American transplant physician and immunobiologist. He was considered one of the pioneers in the field of transplant immunology. Being born in a Jewish family in Vienna, Bach fled Nazism at an early age. He was moved to England in the Kindertransport, and later with his family made the journey overseas to the United States. He obtained a scholarship to study at Harvard and continued his studies until graduating in 1960. Soon afterwards, Bach made his first contributions to the field of transplant immunology. One of his main achievements was the development of the mixed lymphocyte culture test, which furthered research on preventing transplant rejection.
Go to Profile#2931
Laszlo Lorand
#49861
Overall Influence
1923 - 2018 (95 years)
Laszlo Lorand was a Hungarian-American biochemist who studied clotting of blood and other bodily fluids. A professor emeritus in cell and molecular biology at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Lorand was a longtime professor in the departments of chemistry and molecular biosciences at Northwestern University before transferring to Northwestern's medical school. Lorand was a co-discoverer of the substance that later became known as factor XIII. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#2932
Andrea Gamarnik
#68029
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Andrea Gamarnik is an Argentinian molecular virologist noted for her work on Dengue fever. She received a 2016 L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science fellowship for work on mosquito-borne viruses include Dengue fever. She also was granted the Konex Award Merit Diploma in 2013 and the Platinum Konex Award in 2023 for her work in those last decades. She studied at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of California, San Francisco. She has done work for the Leloir Institute. She is the first female Argentinian to become a member of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Go to Profile#2933
Tracy Palmer
#48066
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Tracy Palmer is a Professor of Microbiology in the Biosciences Institute at Newcastle University in Tyne & Wear, England. She is known for her work on the twin-arginine translocation pathway. Early life and education Palmer was born in Sheffield on 8 May 1967, the only child of Enid and Roy Palmer . Palmer was brought up in the steel town of Stocksbridge in South Yorkshire where she attended Stocksbridge High School. Palmer attended the University of Birmingham where she was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry in 1988 followed by a PhD in 1992 for research investigating the enzyme kinetics of the proton pumping transhydrogenase from photosynthetic bacteria.
Go to Profile#2934
Peter G. Jenner
#75294
Overall Influence
#2935
Dennis Keeney
#55404
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Dennis R. Keeney is an American scientist in soil science and water chemistry. He was the first director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Ames, Iowa. Early life and education Keeney grew up on his family's dairy farm near Runnells, Iowa not far from Des Moines.
Go to Profile#2936
Lynne Talley
#45111
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Lynne Talley is a physical oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography known for her research into the large-scale circulation of water masses in the global ocean. Early life and education Talley received a B.A. in physics in 1976 from Oberlin College and a Bachelor of Music in piano performance from Oberlin Conservatory of Music. The following year, she studied piano performance with Carl Seeman at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany. She continued her studies at the New England Conservatory of Music. After moving to San Diego, she studied music at San Diego Stat...
Go to Profile#2937
Neena Schwartz
#46279
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
Neena Betty Schwartz was an American endocrinologist and William Deering Professor of Endocrinology Emerita in the Department of Neurobiology at Northwestern University. She was best known for her work on female reproductive biology and the regulation of hormonal signaling pathways, particularly for the discovery of the signaling hormone inhibin. Schwartz was an active feminist advocate for women in science throughout her career; she was a founding member of the Association for Women in Science organization in 1971 and shared the founding presidency with Judith Pool. She also co-founded the W...
Go to Profile#2938
Fred Sherman
#63672
Overall Influence
1932 - 2013 (81 years)
Fred Sherman was an American scientist who pioneered the use of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model for studying the genetics, molecular biology, and biochemistry of eukaryotic cells. His research encompassed broad areas of yeast biology including gene expression, protein synthesis, messenger RNA processing, bioenergetics, and mechanisms of mutagenesis. He also contributed extensively to the genetics of the opportunistic pathogen Candida albicans.
Go to Profile#2939
George Delahunty
#25396
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
George B. Delahunty is an American physiologist and endocrinologist. He was a long-time professor at Goucher College, working there from 1979 to 2018. Delahunty was the Lilian Welsh Professor of Biology and a co-founder of the post-baccalaureate premedical program at Goucher College. His research explored metabolism and endocrine control in vertebrates.
Go to Profile#2940
Kathrin Jansen
#50754
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Kathrin U. Jansen is the former Head of Vaccine Research and Development at Pfizer. She previously led the development of the HPV vaccine and newer versions of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine , and is working with BioNTech to create a COVID-19 vaccine using mRNA that was approved for Emergency Use Authorization in the United States on December 11, 2020.
Go to Profile#2941
Leonard P Guarente
#75330
Overall Influence
#2942
Ajit Varki
#26079
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Ajit Varki is a physician-scientist who is distinguished professor of medicine and cellular and molecular medicine, founding co-director of the Glycobiology Research and Training Center at the University of California, San Diego , and founding co-director of the UCSD/Salk Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny . He is also executive editor of the textbook Essentials of Glycobiology and distinguished visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and the National Center for Biological Sciences in Bangalore. He is a specialist advisor to the Human Gene Nome...
Go to Profile#2943
Antonio Garcia-Bellido
#47484
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Antonio García-Bellido y García de Diego ForMemRS is a Spanish developmental biologist. His ideas and new approaches to the problem of development have been followed and pursued by many researchers worldwide. He is Research Professor at the Spanish National Research Council since 1974.
Go to Profile#2944
Russell L. Mixter
#56405
Overall Influence
1906 - 2007 (101 years)
Russell L. Mixter was an American scientist, noted for leading the American Scientific Affiliation away from anti-evolutionism, and for his advocacy of progressive creationism. Academic career Mixter graduated from Wheaton College, Illinois, in 1928 with a major in literature and a minor in biology. He thereafter gained an M.S. in zoology from Michigan State College and a Ph.D. in anatomy from the University of Illinois School of Medicine in Chicago, shortly after returning to Wheaton to teach. He has been professor of zoology there since 1945, and was chairman of the Science Division from 1...
Go to Profile#2945
Domenico Ribatti
#75369
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
#2946
Mary R. Dawson
#51463
Overall Influence
1931 - 2020 (89 years)
Mary R. Dawson was a vertebrate paleontologist and curator emeritus at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Education and career Dawson was raised in Michigan, received her undergraduate degree from Michigan State University, and received her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. She was Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh from 1972 until she retired in 2003, including serving as chair of the Earth Sciences Division from 1973 to 1997.
Go to Profile#2947
Geoffrey Michael Gadd
#72244
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Geoffrey Michael Gadd is a British-Irish microbiologist and mycologist specializing in geomicrobiology, geomycology, and bioremediation. He is currently a professor at the University of Dundee, holding the Boyd Baxter Chair of Biology, and is head of the Geomicrobiology Group.
Go to Profile#2948
Ralf Baumeister
#73975
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Ralf Baumeister is a German professor . He is currently co-director of the School of Life Sciences at Freiburg University's Institute of Advanced Studies. He uses the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans in his studies.
Go to Profile#2949
Alan Ebringer
#53302
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Alan Ebringer B.Sc, MD, FRCP, FRACP, FRCPath is an Australian immunologist, professor at King’s College in the University of London. He is also an Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist in the Middlesex Hospital, now part of the UCH School of Medicine. He is known for his research in the field of autoimmune disease.
Go to Profile#2950
Andrew p. Mcmahon
#75413
Overall Influence
