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,
#301
Hugh Huxley
#8234
Overall Influence
1924 - 2013 (89 years)
Hugh Esmor Huxley MBE FRS was a British molecular biologist who made important discoveries in the physiology of muscle. He was a graduate in physics from Christ's College, Cambridge. However, his education was interrupted for five years by the Second World War, during which he served in the Royal Air Force. His contribution to development of radar earned him an MBE.
Go to Profile#302
Geoffrey Burnstock
#10656
Overall Influence
1929 - 2020 (91 years)
Geoffrey Burnstock was a neurobiologist and President of the Autonomic Neuroscience Centre of the UCL Medical School. He is best known for coining the term purinergic signalling, which he discovered in the 1970s. He retired in October 2017 at the age of 88.
Go to Profile#303
David B. Weishampel
#9887
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Professor David Bruce Weishampel is an American palaeontologist in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Weishampel received his Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981. His research focuses include dinosaur systematics, European dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous, jaw mechanics and herbivory, cladistics and heterochrony and the history of evolutionary biology. Weishampel's best known published work is The Dinosauria University of California Press; 2nd edition . He consulted for Jurassic Park and is a good friend of Steven Spielberg.
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Barry Halliwell
#14382
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Barry Halliwell is an English biochemist, chemist and university administrator, specialising in free radical metabolism in both animals and plants. His name is included in the "Foyer–Halliwell–Asada" pathway, a cellular process of hydrogen peroxide metabolism in plants and animals, named for the three principal discoverers, with Christine Foyer and Kozi Asada. He moved to Singapore in 2000, and served as Deputy President of the National University of Singapore , where he continues to hold a Tan Chin Tuan Centennial professorship.
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Karl Stetter
#6558
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Karl Otto Stetter is a German microbiologist and authority on astrobiology. Stetter is an expert on microbial life at high temperatures. Career Stetter was born in Munich and studied biology at the Technical University of Munich. Stetter wrote Stetter's doctoral dissertation on lactobacilli. From 1980 to 2002 Stetter was professor at, and head of, the department of microbiology and of the Archaea center of the University of Regensburg.
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Richard Evans Schultes
#4234
Overall Influence
1915 - 2001 (86 years)
Richard Evans Schultes was an American biologist, considered to be the father of modern ethnobotany. He is known for his studies of the uses of plants by indigenous peoples, especially the indigenous peoples of the Americas. He worked on entheogenic or hallucinogenic plants, particularly in Mexico and the Amazon, involving lifelong collaborations with chemists. He had charismatic influence as an educator at Harvard University; several of his students and colleagues went on to write popular books and assume influential positions in museums, botanical gardens, and popular culture.
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Robert Plomin
#5536
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Robert Joseph Plomin is an American/British psychologist and geneticist best known for his work in twin studies and behavior genetics. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Plomin as the 71st most cited psychologist of the 20th century. He is the author of several books on genetics and psychology.
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Sean B. Carroll
#9656
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Sean B. Carroll is an American evolutionary developmental biologist, author, educator and executive producer. He is a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland and professor emeritus of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His studies focus on the evolution of cis-regulatory elements in the regulation of gene expression in the context of biological development, using Drosophila as a model system. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, of the American Philosophical Society , of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for Advancement of Science.
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Joseph G. Gall
#10758
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Joseph Grafton Gall is an American cell biologist who is noted for studies revealing the details of chromosome structure and function. Gall's studies were greatly facilitated by his knowledge of many different organisms because he could select the most favorable organism to study when approaching a specific question about nuclear structure. He was awarded the 2006 Albert Lasker Special Achievement Award. He was also a co-recipient of the 2007 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. In 1983 he was honored with the highest recognition of the American Society for Cell Biology, the E.
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Peter D. Mitchell
#4752
Overall Influence
1920 - 1992 (72 years)
Peter Dennis Mitchell FRS was a British biochemist who was awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his theory of the chemiosmotic mechanism of ATP synthesis. Education and early life Mitchell was born in Mitcham, Surrey on 29 September 1920. His parents were Christopher Gibbs Mitchell, a civil servant, and Kate Beatrice Dorothy Taplin. His uncle was Sir Godfrey Way Mitchell, chairman of George Wimpey. He was educated at Queen's College, Taunton and Jesus College, Cambridge where he studied the Natural Sciences Tripos specialising in Biochemistry.
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Eugenie Clark
#7108
Overall Influence
1922 - 2015 (93 years)
Eugenie Clark , popularly known as The Shark Lady, was an American ichthyologist known for both her research on shark behavior and her study of fish in the order Tetraodontiformes. Clark was a pioneer in the field of scuba diving for research purposes. In addition to being regarded as an authority in marine biology, Clark was popularly recognized and used her fame to promote marine conservation.
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H. Allen Orr
#5996
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
H. Allen Orr is the Shirley Cox Kearns Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester. Education and career Orr earned his bachelor's degree in Biology and Philosophy from the College of William and Mary and his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Chicago. At Chicago, Orr studied under Jerry Coyne. He performed postdoctoral research at the University of California, Davis.
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Richard Scheller
#7832
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Richard H. Scheller is the former Chief Science Officer and Head of Therapeutics at 23andMe and the former Executive Vice President of Research and Early Development at Genentech. He was a professor at Stanford University from 1982 to 2001 before joining Genentech. He has been awarded the Alan T. Waterman Award in 1989, the W. Alden Spencer Award in 1993 and the NAS Award in Molecular Biology in 1997, won the 2010 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience with Thomas C. Südhof and James E. Rothman, and won the 2013 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research with Thomas Südhof. He was also given the Life Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award from University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Go to Profile#314
Irwin Fridovich
#11878
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Irwin Fridovich was an American biochemist who, together with his graduate student Joe M. McCord, discovered the enzymatic activity of copper-zinc superoxide dismutase ,—to protect organisms from the toxic effects of superoxide free radicals formed as a byproduct of normal oxygen metabolism. Subsequently, Fridovich's research group also discovered the manganese-containing and the iron-containing SODs from Escherichia coli and the mitochondrial MnSOD , now known to be an essential protein in mammals. He spent the rest of his career studying the biochemical mechanisms of SOD and of biological superoxide toxicity, using bacteria as model systems.
Go to Profile#315
Anne McLaren
#7286
Overall Influence
1927 - 2007 (80 years)
Dame Anne Laura Dorinthea McLaren, was a British scientist who was a leading figure in developmental biology. She paved the way for women in science and her work helped lead to human in vitro fertilisation . She left an enduring legacy marked by her research and ethical contributions to the field. She received many honors for her contributions to science, including election as fellow of the Royal Society.
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Ruth Fowler Edwards
#7183
Overall Influence
1930 - 2013 (83 years)
Ruth Fowler Edwards, Lady Edwards was a British geneticist and the long-time wife and collaborator of Robert G. Edwards, the "father" of in vitro fertilization. Life Ruth was descended from a line of distinguished scientists. According to Martin Johnson, She was the granddaughter of Ernest Rutherford, who himself won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1908, ‘for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances’ . Her father was Sir Ralph Fowler FRS , who was Plummer Professor of Mathematical Physics in Cambridge from 1932 to 1944.Her mothe...
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Roderick MacKinnon
#1853
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Roderick MacKinnon is an American biophysicist, neuroscientist, and businessman. He is a professor of molecular neurobiology and biophysics at Rockefeller University who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Peter Agre in 2003 for his work on the structure and operation of ion channels.
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Walter Veith
#8662
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Walter Julius Veith is a South African zoologist and a Seventh-day Adventist author and speaker known for his work in nutrition, creationism and Biblical exegesis. Veith was professor of the zoology department at the University of Cape Town and taught in the medical bioscience department. During this time, the department was awarded a Royal Society London grant for zoological research.
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John Krebs, Baron Krebs
#5742
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
John Richard Krebs, Baron Krebs, FRS is an English zoologist researching in the field of behavioural ecology of birds. He was the principal of Jesus College, Oxford, from 2005 until 2015. Lord Krebs was President of the British Science Association from 2012 to 2013.
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Elena Conti
#10293
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Elena Conti is an Italian biochemist and molecular biologist. She serves as Director and Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany, where she uses structural biology and biophysical techniques to study RNA transport and RNA metabolism. Together with Elisa Izaurralde, she helped characterize proteins important for exporting mRNA out of the nucleus.
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Eric Pianka
#10097
Overall Influence
1939 - 2022 (83 years)
Eric Rodger Pianka was an American herpetologist and evolutionary ecologist. Early life Pianka was born in Siskiyou County in 1939. At age 13, he was seriously injured in a bazooka blast in the front yard of his childhood home in Yreka, California. His left leg became gangrenous, and he lost 10 cm of his tibia, as well as the terminal digit of the middle finger on his right hand. Pianka's childhood injury left him with a short and partially paralyzed leg. In later life, his short leg resulted in spinal scoliosis and cervical spondylosis.
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Wacław Gajewski
#10031
Overall Influence
1911 - 1997 (86 years)
Wacław Gajewski was a Polish geneticist, one of the founders of the Polish post-war genetics and author of academic and popular scientific books. Biography Gajewski was born in Kraków in 1911. He graduated from the Warsaw University in 1934 and received his doctorate in 1937.
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PZ Myers
#2632
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Paul Zachary Myers is an American biologist who founded and writes the Pharyngula science blog. He is associate professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris where he works in the field of developmental biology. He is a critic of intelligent design and the creationist movement and other pseudoscientific concepts.
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Jack Horner
#3926
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
John Robert Horner is an American paleontologist most famous for describing Maiasaura, providing the first clear evidence that some dinosaurs cared for their young. In addition to his paleontological discoveries, Horner served as the technical advisor for the first five Jurassic Park films, had a cameo appearance in Jurassic World, and served as a partial inspiration for one of the lead characters of the franchise, Dr. Alan Grant. Horner studied at the University of Montana, although he did not complete his degree due to undiagnosed dyslexia, and was awarded a Doctorate in Science honoris causa.
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Keith L. Moore
#7159
Overall Influence
1925 - 2019 (94 years)
Keith Leon Moore was a professor in the division of anatomy, in the faculty of Surgery, at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Moore was associate dean for Basic Medical Sciences in the university's faculty of Medicine and was Chair of Anatomy from 1976 to 1984. He was a founding member of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists and was President of the AACA between 1989 and 1991.
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Rita R. Colwell
#7104
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Rita Rossi Colwell is an American environmental microbiologist and scientific administrator. Colwell holds degrees in bacteriology, genetics, and oceanography and studies infectious diseases. Colwell is the founder and Chair of CosmosID, a bioinformatics company. From 1998 to 2004, she was the 11th Director and 1st female Director of the National Science Foundation. She has served on the board of directors of EcoHealth Alliance since 2012.
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Hobart Muir Smith
#4446
Overall Influence
1912 - 2013 (101 years)
Hobart Muir Smith, born Frederick William Stouffer , was an American herpetologist. He is credited with describing more than 100 new species of American reptiles and amphibians. In addition, he has been honored by having at least six species named after him, including the southwestern blackhead snake , Smith's earth snake , Smith's arboreal alligator lizard , Hobart's anadia , Hobart Smith's anole , and Smith's rose-bellied lizard . At 100 years of age, Smith continued to be an active and productive herpetologist. Although he published on a wide range of herpetological subjects, his main focus...
Go to Profile#328
Gertrude B. Elion
#2999
Overall Influence
1918 - 1999 (81 years)
Gertrude "Trudy" Belle Elion was an American biochemist and pharmacologist, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George H. Hitchings and Sir James Black for their use of innovative methods of rational drug design for the development of new drugs. This new method focused on understanding the target of the drug rather than simply using trial-and-error. Her work led to the creation of the anti-retroviral drug AZT, which was the first drug widely used against AIDS. Her well known works also include the development of the first immunosuppressive drug, azathioprine, used t...
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William J. Rutter
#8904
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
William J. Rutter is an American biochemist who cofounded the early biotechnology company Chiron Corporation together with Edward Penhoet and Pablo DT Valenzuela. As chairman of the department of biochemistry and biophysics of the University of California, San Francisco, Rutter helped establish that department as a leader in the academic side of the biotechnology during the San Francisco Bay Area biotech boom of the 1980s.
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Bruce Lipton
#11030
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Bruce Harold Lipton is an American writer and lecturer who advocates various pseudosciences, including vaccine misinformation. By his own admission, Lipton's ideas have not received attention from mainstream science.
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Lewis C. Cantley
#10908
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Lewis C. Cantley is an American cell biologist and biochemist who has made significant advances to the understanding of cancer metabolism. Among his most notable contributions are the discovery and study of the enzyme PI-3-kinase, now known to be important to understanding cancer and diabetes mellitus. He is currently Meyer Director and Professor of Cancer Biology at the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. He was formerly a professor in the Departments of Systems Biology and Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the Director of Cancer Research at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Deepak Pandya
#6766
Overall Influence
1932 - 2020 (88 years)
Deepak Pandya was a neuroanatomist who is best known for his contributions to the understanding of cortical and subcortical brain connectivity in the macaque using tract-tracing methods. He is the father of NASA astronaut Sunita Williams.
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Jean Decety
#3887
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
#334
Farooq Azam
#5134
Overall Influence
Farooq Azam is a researcher in the field of marine microbiology. He is a Distinguished Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California San Diego. Farooq Azam grew up in Lahore and received his early education in Lahore. He attended University of Punjab, where he received his B.Sc. in chemistry. He later he received his M.Sc. from the same institution. He then went to Czechoslovakia for higher studies. He received his PhD in microbiology from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. After he received his PhD, Farooq Azam moved to California. Azam was the lead author on the paper which coined the term microbial loop.
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Guido Kroemer
#13642
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Guido Kroemer is a cell biologist who has made contributions to the understanding of the role of mitochondria in cell death. He is a member of multiple scientific academies in Europe and is one of the most highly cited authors in cell biology.
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Harvey Itano
#4618
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
Harvey Akio Itano was an American biochemist best known for his work on the molecular basis of sickle cell anemia and other diseases. In collaboration with Linus Pauling, Itano used electrophoresis to demonstrate the difference between normal hemoglobin and sickle cell hemoglobin; their 1949 paper "Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease" was a landmark in both molecular medicine and protein electrophoresis, though the use of electrophoresis to separate hemoglobin variants had been pioneered by Maud Menten and collaborators some years earlier.
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Paul L. Modrich
#4180
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Paul Lawrence Modrich is an American biochemist, James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry at Duke University and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is known for his research on DNA mismatch repair. Modrich received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015, jointly with Aziz Sancar and Tomas Lindahl.
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Peter Duesberg
#2888
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Peter H. Duesberg is a German-American molecular biologist and a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his early research into the genetic aspects of cancer. He is a proponent of AIDS denialism, the claim that HIV does not cause AIDS.
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Maurice Hilleman
#2430
Overall Influence
1919 - 2005 (86 years)
Maurice Ralph Hilleman was a leading American microbiologist who specialized in vaccinology and developed over 40 vaccines, an unparalleled record of productivity. According to one estimate, his vaccines save nearly eight million lives each year. He has been described as one of the most influential vaccinologists ever.
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James A. Shapiro
#9861
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
James Alan Shapiro is an American biologist, an expert in bacterial genetics and a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago. Academic biography Shapiro obtained his Bachelor's degree in English from Harvard College in 1964. Then, inspired by a genetics course he had taken as a senior, he shifted from English to science. He was awarded a Marshall scholarship for postgraduate research at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge from 1964 to 1967, spending his final year at Hammersmith hospital under the supervision of William Hayes, and being awarded a PhD in genetics in 1968.
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Tom Maniatis
#13028
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Tom Maniatis , is an American professor of molecular and cellular biology. He is a professor at Columbia University, and serves as the Scientific Director and CEO of the New York Genome Center. Education Maniatis received B.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and a PhD in Molecular Biology from Vanderbilt University. He carried out postdoctoral studies at Harvard University and at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.
Go to Profile#342
Maxine Singer
#9205
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Maxine Frank Singer is an American molecular biologist and science administrator. She is known for her contributions to solving the genetic code, her role in the ethical and regulatory debates on recombinant DNA techniques , and her leadership of Carnegie Institution of Washington. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.
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Christian B. Anfinsen
#6104
Overall Influence
1916 - 1995 (79 years)
Christian Boehmer Anfinsen Jr. was an American biochemist. He shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Stanford Moore and William Howard Stein for work on ribonuclease, especially concerning the connection between the amino acid sequence and the biologically active conformation .
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C. S. Holling
#8435
Overall Influence
1930 - 2019 (89 years)
Crawford Stanley "Buzz" Holling, was a Canadian ecologist, and Emeritus Eminent Scholar and Professor in Ecological Sciences at the University of Florida. Holling was one of the conceptual founders of ecological economics.
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David Bellamy
#2905
Overall Influence
1933 - 2019 (86 years)
David James Bellamy was an English botanist, television presenter, author and environmental campaigner. Early and personal life Bellamy was born at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in London to parents Winifred May and Thomas Bellamy on 18 January 1933. He was raised in a Baptist family and retained a strong Christian faith throughout his life. As a child, he had hoped to be a ballet dancer, but he concluded that his rather large physique regrettably precluded him from pursuing the training.
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Yasutomi Nishizuka
#6150
Overall Influence
1932 - 2004 (72 years)
Yasutomi Nishizuka, MJA, ForMemRS was a prominent Japanese biochemist and made important contributions to the understanding of molecular mechanism of signal transduction across the cell membrane. In 1977, he discovered protein kinase C, which plays significant roles in a variety of intracellular signal transduction processes.
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Lap-Chee Tsui
#5552
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Lap-Chee Tsui is a Chinese-born Canadian geneticist and served as the 14th Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Hong Kong. Personal life He grew up in Kowloon, Hong Kong and attended .
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Takeo Doi
#4419
Overall Influence
1920 - 2009 (89 years)
Takeo Doi was a Japanese academic, psychoanalyst and author. Early life Doi was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1920. He was a graduate of the University of Tokyo. Career Doi was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Neuropsychiatry at the University of Tokyo and a medical adviser to St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo. He was also Director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Japan. He taught at the University of Tokyo and at International Christian University . He wrote numerous books and articles both in Japanese and in English.
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Stanley Falkow
#10625
Overall Influence
1934 - 2018 (84 years)
Stanley "Stan" Falkow was an American microbiologist and a professor of microbiology at Georgetown University, University of Washington, and Stanford University School of Medicine. Falkow is known as the father of the field of molecular microbial pathogenesis. He formulated molecular Koch's postulates, which have guided the study of the microbial determinants of infectious diseases since the late 1980s. Falkow spent over 50 years uncovering molecular mechanisms of how bacteria cause disease and how to disarm them. Falkow also was one of the first scientists to investigate antimicrobial resis...
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Johann Deisenhofer
#2420
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Johann Deisenhofer is a German biochemist who, along with Hartmut Michel and Robert Huber, received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1988 for their determination of the first crystal structure of an integral membrane protein, a membrane-bound complex of proteins and co-factors that is essential to photosynthesis.
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