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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List of the most influential people in Biology,

#2951

V. Sasisekharan

#23605

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Viswanathan Sasisekharan is an Indian biophysicist known for his work on the structure and conformation of biopolymers. He introduced the use of torsion angles to describe polypeptide and protein conformation, a central principle of the plot . Additionally, he was the first to introduce alternative models of DNA structure that provided insights beyond the standard double helix model. For his contributions to the biological sciences, he was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of India’s highest science awards, in 1978.

#2952

Elsie Quarterman

Elsie Quarterman

#43595

Overall Influence

1910 - 2014 (104 years)

Elsie Quarterman was a prominent plant ecologist. She was a Professor Emerita at Vanderbilt University. Quarterman was born on November 28, 1910, in Valdosta, Georgia. She earned a B.A. from Georgia State Women's College in 1932 and earned an M.A. in botany from Duke University in 1943. She completed her PhD at Duke University in 1949 with Henry J. Oosting. During her graduate work and afterward, she also collaborated extensively with Catherine Keever.

#2953

Pieter Baas

#57535

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Pieter Baas is a Dutch botanist. He is an emeritus professor of plant systematics at Leiden University. He served as director of the of Leiden University between 1991 and 1999. When the institute was faced with budget cuts in 1993 he managed to preserve the collection by joining it with the university collections of Wageningen and Utrecht. This led to the founding of the National Herbarium of the Netherlands in 1999. Baas subsequently became director of the institute and served until 2005. As a botanist Baas specializes in wood anatomy.

#2954

Derek van der Kooy

#62353

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Derek van der Kooy , Fellow of Royal Society of Canada, is professor in the department of medical genetics and microbiology at the University of Toronto. He received a master's degree in psychology at the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. in anatomy from Erasmus University in 1978, as well as in the department of anatomy at the University of Toronto in 1980. Van der Kooy gained postdoctoral research experience at Cambridge University and at the Salk Institute in California. In 2021 van der Kooy was elected to the Academy of Science Royal Society of Canada.

#2955

Amita Sehgal

#61025

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Amita Sehgal is a molecular biologist and chronobiologist in the Department of Neuroscience at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Sehgal was involved in the discovery of Drosophila TIM and many other important components of the Drosophila clock mechanism. Sehgal also played a pivotal role in the development of Drosophila as a model for the study of sleep. Her research continues to be focused on understanding the genetic basis of sleep and also how circadian systems relate to other aspects of physiology.

#2956

Hermann Rahn

#75503

Overall Influence

#2957

David Newcomb Herndon

#75511

Overall Influence

#2958

Regis B. Kelly

#51014

Overall Influence

Regis Baker Kelly OBE is a neuroscientist and university administrator who develops academia-industry partnerships and supports early-stage entrepreneurship in the life sciences. Early life Kelly grew up in a working-class family in Edinburgh, Scotland. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a bachelor's degree in physics in 1961.

#2959

Shelley Berger

#73052

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Shelley L. Berger is the Daniel S. Och Professor of cell and developmental biology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Her research focuses on epigenetics. Education and career Berger graduated from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor with a BS in biology in 1982 and a PhD in cell and molecular biology in 1987. She did a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT. Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania faculty, she was the Hilary Koprowski Professor at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia.

#2960

P. B. Tomlinson

#69576

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Philip Barry Tomlinson is a British botanist specializing in tropical botany. He graduated in Biology BSc and Botany PhD from University of Leeds. He is the Edward C. Jeffrey Professor of Biology, Emeritus at Harvard Forest, Harvard University. He was awarded the Linnean Medal in 1999.

#2961

Margie Profet

#25665

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Margaret J. "Margie" Profet is an American evolutionary biologist with no formal biology training who created a decade-long controversy when she published her findings on the role of Darwinian evolution in menstruation, allergies and morning sickness. She argued that these three processes had evolved to eliminate pathogens, carcinogens and other toxins from the body.

#2962

Peter Shaw Ashton

#75520

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Peter Shaw Ashton is a British botanist. He is Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry at Harvard University, and director of the Arnold Arboretum there from 1978 to 1987. Born in Boscombe, Bournemouth, England, Ashton received his B.A. in Biology , M.A. in Biology and Ph.D. Botany from the University of Cambridge. He has worked for many years on research projects to promote the conservation and sustainable use of tropical forests, and was instrumental in the project by the Center for Tropical Forest Science to formulate a network of Forest Dynamic Plots which are surveyed regularly to sample...

#2963

Stanisław Konturek

#46448

Overall Influence

1931 - 2019 (88 years)

Stanisław Jan Konturek was a Polish physiologist and gastroenterologist, a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Polish Academy of Learning, and professor of Jagiellonian University Collegium Medicum.

#2964

Malcolm Steinberg

#59360

Overall Influence

1930 - 2012 (82 years)

Malcolm Saul Steinberg was an American biologist who proposed the differential adhesion hypothesis as a mechanism explaining cell sorting during embryogenesis and cancer. Steinberg proposed that when cells form distinct tissues, specific cell-cell adhesion between cells from the same tissue can drive the separation. He further proposed that a difference in level of cell adhesion molecules expression between two cell types was sufficient to drive the separation. He confirmed these predictions in a model system in which adhesion between cells of a cultured line of mouse cells was controlled by ...

#2965

Elkan Blout

#45226

Overall Influence

1919 - 2006 (87 years)

Elkan Rogers Blout was a biochemist at Polaroid Corporation, Boston Children's Hospital, and the Edward S. Harkness Professor of Biological Chemistry, emeritus at Harvard University. Blout received his BA in chemistry in 1939 from Princeton University, and his Ph.D. in 1942 from Columbia University.

#2966

Marek Sanak

#53301

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Marek Jan Sanak is a Polish geneticist and molecular biologist, professor of medical sciences, Head of the Department of Molecular Biology and Clinical Genetics of the Jagiellonian University Medical College, Head of the Department of Biochemical and Molecular Diagnostics at the University Hospital in Kraków, the Jagiellonian University Rector's Plenipotentiary for Science and Development in the Medical College, member of the Polish Academy of Learning, and the author of more than 230 original research papers published in peer reviewed journals. In 1997, together with Andrzej Szczeklik, he re...

#2967

Mary Jeanne Kreek

Mary Jeanne Kreek

#27039

Overall Influence

1937 - 2021 (84 years)

Mary Jeanne Kreek was an American neurobiologist specializing in the study and treatment of addiction. She is best known for her work with Marie Nyswander and Dr. Vincent Dole in the development of methadone therapy for heroin addiction.

#2968

Rik Derynck

#75603

Overall Influence

#2969

Wendy Barclay

#20696

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Wendy Sue Fox is a British virologist. She is currently head of Department of Infectious Disease and chair in Influenza Virology at Imperial College London. She leads a team of scientists studying the influenza virus and its physiology and morphology to discover novel vaccines. In particular, they are trying to understand more about influenza virus mutations, and how they can allow scientists to create new vaccines against possible flu pandemics.

#2970

Anne Ridley

#71951

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Anne Jacqueline Ridley is professor of Cell Biology and Head of School for Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bristol. She was previously a professor at King's College London. Education Ridley was educated at Clare College, Cambridge and awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 1985. After being encouraged by Tim Hunt to pursue a career in research she moved to the University of London where she was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1989 for research investigating the regulation of oncogenes in Schwann cells supervise...

#2971

R. Rajalakshmi

#48154

Overall Influence

1926 - 2007 (81 years)

R. Rajalakshmi was an Indian biochemist and nutritionist. She developed nutritious, economical diets for Indian families. Biography Lakshmi Ramaswami Iyer was born in 1926 in Quilon, Kerala to Meenakshi and G.S. Ramaswami Iyer. She added Raja to her given name at the age of five and grew up in Madras, where her father was employed as a postal audit officer.

#2972

Juleen Zierath

#54189

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Juleen R. Zierath is an American-Swedish biologist. Her research focuses on the cellular mechanisms that correspond to the development of insulin resistance in Type II diabetes. Her other research areas look at exercise-mediated effects on skeletal muscle glucose metabolism and gene expression.

#2973

Clare Waterman

#68118

Overall Influence

Clare M. Waterman is a cell biologist who has worked on understanding the role of the cytoskeleton in cell migration. Waterman is a Distinguished Investigator, Chief of the Laboratory of Cell and Tissue Morphodynamics, and Director of the Cell and Developmental Biology Center at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute , in the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda MD, USA. Waterman has received several awards and honors, including the Sackler International prize in Biophysics, the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, and the Arthur S. Flemming Award for Public Service. In 2018, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

#2974

Thomas Hummel

#75739

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

#2975

Patrik Verstreken

#69440

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Patrik Verstreken is a Belgian neuroscientist, highly cited in his field. His work is focused on the function of neuronal synapses during health and neurological disease. Major contributions include identifying molecular mechanisms by which neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease spread throughout the brain and identification of new defects causing Parkinson's disease.

#2976

Perry Adkisson

#51989

Overall Influence

1929 - 2020 (91 years)

Perry L. Adkisson was Chancellor of the Texas A&M University System. His academic work is known for his research on integrated pest management methods which allowed for a 50% reduction of insecticide use in U.S. agriculture.

#2977

Stefan Dübel

#66275

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Stefan Dübel is a German biologist. Since October 2002, he has been a full professor at the University of Braunschweig and head of the Biotechnology Department of the Institute of Biochemistry, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics. His work is centred around protein engineering, phage display and recombinant antibodies.

#2978

H. Frederick Schuknecht

#75875

Overall Influence

#2979

Arnold Berk

#52858

Overall Influence

Arnold J. Berk is an American professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was a member of the Molecular Biology Institute, a division of University of California, Los Angeles. He was one of the discoverers of RNA splicing. His work focuses on gene regulation in DNA viruses. In 1998 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2003, he received a MERIT Award from the National Cancer Institute. He authored editions 3 through 10 of the influential basic textbook Molecular Cell Biology published by Macmillan

#2980

Robert L. Metcalf

#57765

Overall Influence

1916 - 1998 (82 years)

Robert Lee Metcalf was an American entomologist, environmental toxicologist, and insect chemical ecologist. Metcalf was noted for making environmentally safe pest control achievable. Metcalf was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of National Research Council, a fellow and president of the Entomological Society of America. He was a member of Environmental Protection Agency's Pesticide Advisory Panel. The National Center for Biotechnology Information called Metcalf "one of the leading entomologists of the 20th century".

#2981

John W. Wells

#54078

Overall Influence

1907 - 1994 (87 years)

John West Wells was an American paleontologist, biologist and geologist who focused his research on corals. He was notable for, among other things, proving that the rotational period of the earth undergoes periodic changes. The National Academies of Science said that Wells "made an indelible mark on the world of paleontology." The Independent called Wells "the leading authority on modern and fossil corals, a noteworthy contributor on coral reefs and atolls". Wells was Professor of Geology, Ohio State University, Professor of Geology, Cornell University, President, Paleontological Society, a m...

#2982

Ronald Breaker

#53990

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Ronald R. Breaker is an American biochemist who is a Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University. He is best known for the discovery of riboswitches. His current research is focused on understanding advanced functions of nucleic acids, including the discovery and analysis of riboswitches and ribozymes.

#2983

David L. Jones

#59617

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

David Lloyd Jones is an Australian horticultural botanist and the author of many books and papers, especially on Australian orchids. Jones was born in Victoria and in his youth was a student at Burnley Horticultural College, then the University of Melbourne, graduating with the degree of Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. He was employed for 14 years by the Victorian Department of Agriculture where he helped develop programs involving the nutrient requirements of Australian native plants. He later owned several commercial nurseries. In 1972 his first description of an orchid, Pterostylis aes...

#2984

William Darrell Willis

#75984

Overall Influence

#2985

Eddy van der Maarel

#71290

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Evert "Eddy" van der Maarel was a Dutch ecologist. He spent most of his career as professor of ecological botany at Uppsala University in Sweden. Career Van der Maarel was born on 23 February 1934 in Amsterdam. He studied biology at the University of Amsterdam between 1951 and 1959. Between 1962 and 1968 he worked at the institute of botany of Utrecht University and later at the institute of plant ecology of the University of Groningen. Van der Maarel obtained his PhD at Utrecht University in 1966 with a dissertation titled : "Over vegetatiestructuren, -relaties en -systemen in het bijzonder in de duingraslanden van Voorne".

#2986

Alfred Wittinghofer

#72290

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Alfred "Fred" Wittinghofer is a German biochemist. Education and career At RWTH Aachen University he studied chemistry from 1963 with Diplom in 1968 and with doctorate in 1971. His doctoral work was done at RWTH Aachen University's Deutsches Wollforschungsinstitut . He worked from 1971 to 1973 as a postdoc at the University of North Carolina. At Heidelberg's Max Planck Institute for Medical Research he was 1974 from 1979 a scientific assistant and 1980 from 1993 a research group leader. In 1992 he completed his habilitation in biochemistry at the University of Heidelberg. At Dortmund's Max P...

#2987

Paul E. Olsen

#42066

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Paul E. Olsen is an American paleontologist and author and co-author of a large number of technical papers. Biography Growing up as a teenager in Livingston, New Jersey, he was instrumental in Riker Hill Fossil Site being named a National Natural Landmark as a teenager by sending President Richard Nixon a dinosaur footprint cast from the site. He received a M. Phil. and a Ph.D. in Biology at Yale University in 1984. His thesis was on the Newark Supergroup.

#2988

Chris Ponting

#57875

Overall Influence

Christopher Paul Ponting is a British computational biologist, specializing in the evolution and function of genes and genomes. He is currently Chair of Medical Bioinformatics at the University of Edinburgh and group leader in the MRC Human Genetics Unit. He is also an Associate Faculty member of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His research focuses on long noncoding RNA function and evolution, on single cell biology and on disease genomics. Outs...

#2989

David Allan Butterfield

#76048

Overall Influence

#2990

Yang Huanming

#38257

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Yang Huanming , also known as Henry Yang, is a Chinese biologist, businessman and one of China's leading genetics researchers. He is Chairman and co-founder of the Beijing Genomics Institute, formerly of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was elected as member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2007, a foreign academician of Indian National Science Academy in 2009, a member of the German National Academy of Sciences in 2012, and foreign associate of the US National Academy of Science in 2014.

#2991

Flossie Wong-Staal

Flossie Wong-Staal

#29913

Overall Influence

1947 - 2020 (73 years)

Flossie Wong-Staal was a Chinese-American virologist and molecular biologist. She was the first scientist to clone HIV and determine the function of its genes, which was a major step in proving that HIV is the cause of AIDS. From 1990 to 2002, she held the Florence Riford Chair in AIDS Research at the University of California, San Diego . She was co-founder and, after retiring from UCSD, she became the chief scientific officer of Immusol, which was renamed Pharmaceuticals in 2007 when it transitioned to a drug development company focused on hepatitis C and continued as chief scientific offic...

#2992

Cisca Wijmenga

#38132

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Tjitske Nienke "Cisca" Wijmenga is a Dutch professor of Human Genetics at the University of Groningen and the University Medical Center Groningen. She has been Rector Magnificus of the University since September 2019.

#2993

Laurence Pearl

#30704

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Laurence Harris Pearl FRS FMedSci is a British biochemist and structural biologist who is currently Professor of Structural Biology in the Genome Damage and Stability Centre and was Head of the School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex.

#2994

David Livermore

#65804

Overall Influence

David Livermore is professor of medical microbiology at the University of East Anglia. After working at the London Hospital Medical College from 1980 to 1997, he joined the Public Health Laboratory Service , and became director of its Antibiotic Resistance Monitoring and Reference Laboratory. He was appointed professor of medical microbiology at the University of East Anglia in 2011. His chief research has been on the evolution and epidemiology of antibiotic resistance.

#2995

David Goodsell

#49198

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

David S. Goodsell, is an associate professor at the Scripps Research Institute and research professor at Rutgers University, New Jersey . He is especially known for his watercolor paintings of cell interiors.

#2996

Carol Mason

#46834

Overall Influence

Carol Ann Mason is a Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at Columbia University in the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. She studies axon guidance in visual pathways in an effort to restore vision to the blind. Her research focuses on the retinal ganglion cell. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.

#2997

Lawrence S.B. Goldstein

#60972

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Lawrence S.B. Goldstein is a professor of cellular and molecular medicine at University of California, San Diego and investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He receives grant funding from the NIH, the Johns Hopkins ALS Center, the HighQ Foundation, and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. In 2020 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

#2998

Shobhona Sharma

#68451

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Shobhona Sharma is a professor specializing in immunology, molecular biology, and biochemistry at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. She is also the chairperson of the Department of Biological Sciences. She is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy.

#2999

Toshio Narahashi

#76191

Overall Influence

#3000

John A. Wiens

#76195

Overall Influence

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