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,
#3051
David Sachs
#40763
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
David Howard Sachs is an American immunologist. He is best known for his discovery of MHC class II and for his seminal studies in the fields of transplant immune tolerance and xenotransplantation. Education David Sachs graduated summa cum laude in organic chemistry from Harvard College in 1963, and pursued a master's degree equivalent at the University of Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1964. He then matriculated to Harvard Medical School, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1968.
Go to Profile#3052
Hal E. Broxmeyer
#64167
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
Hal E. Broxmeyer was an American microbiologist. He was a professor at the Mary Margaret Walther Program for Cancer Care Research, and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He received a BS degree from Brooklyn College in 1969 and a PhD from New York University in 1973.
Go to Profile#3053
Richard L. Sidman
#76945
Overall Influence
#3054
Bernard R Glick
#76952
Overall Influence
#3055
Katja Becker
#59700
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Katja Becker is a German physician and biochemist who has been serving as the president of the German Research Foundation since 2020. She had previously been the organization's vice president from 2014 to 2019.
Go to Profile#3056
Richard A. Jorgensen
#56624
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Richard A. Jorgensen is an American molecular geneticist and an early pioneer in the study of post transcriptional gene silencing. Biography From 1965 through 1969 he attended Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Illinois, a college preparatory school. Jorgensen holds a B.S. in biomedical engineering and a M.S. in chemistry from Northwestern University, which he attended from 1969 through 1973. In 1978, he received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He did postdoctoral research at the Carnegie Institution's plant biology department at Stanford University with William F T...
Go to Profile#3057
Iain Couzin
#61499
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Iain Couzin is a British scientist and currently one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Department of Collective Behaviour and the chair of Biodiversity and Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz . He is known for his work on collective behaviour in animals that aims to understand the fundamental patterns responsible for evolution of such behaviour in taxa as diverse as insects, fish and primates. In recognition of his work, he has received several awards including the Searle Scholar Award in 2008, the Mohammed Dahleh Award in 2009, the National Geogra...
Go to Profile#3058
Delphine Parrott
#32855
Overall Influence
1928 - 2016 (88 years)
Delphine Mary Vera Parrott FRSE was a British endocrinologist, immunologist, and academic. She did research at the National Institute for Medical Research in the 1950s and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in the 1960s.
Go to Profile#3059
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
#34283
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and co-director of the Wellcome Trust PhD Programme Neuroscience at University College London.
Go to Profile#3060
Yves Moreau
#54575
Overall Influence
Yves Moreau is a Professor of Engineering at KU Leuven. Moreau was elected a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology in 2018 for outstanding contributions to the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics.
Go to Profile#3061
Roberto Kolter
#69443
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Roberto Kolter is Professor of Microbiology, Emeritus at Harvard Medical School, an author, and past president of the American Society for Microbiology. Kolter has been a professor at Harvard Medical School since 1983 and was Co-director of Harvard's Microbial Sciences Initiative from 2003-2018. During the 35-year term of the Kolter laboratory from 1983 to 2018, more than 130 graduate student and postdoctoral trainees explored an eclectic mix of topics gravitating around the study of microbes. Kolter is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Aca...
Go to Profile#3062
Lise Eliot
#37154
Overall Influence
Lise Eliot is Professor of Neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. She is best known for her book, on the gender differences between boys and girls, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps and What We Can Do About It .
Go to Profile#3063
Ernest Feytmans
#61291
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Prof. Ernest Feytmans is a Belgian biologist and was director of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics between 2001 and September 2007. Feytmans graduated in biology and statistics at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, and obtained a PhD in 1973 following a thesis in Cell Biology with Jacques Berthet and Christian de Duve. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University with Christian de Duve, he became professor at the Catholic University of Santiago, in Chile. In 1975, he became full professor at Namur University, Belgium, where he was head of the department of biolog...
Go to Profile#3064
Ian Newton
#49031
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Ian Newton is an English ornithologist. Education and early life Newton was born and raised in north Derbyshire and was educated at Chesterfield Grammar School. He graduated from the University of Bristol. He received his D.Phil. in 1964 and D.Sc. in 1982 from the University of Oxford, and has studied a wide range of bird species.
Go to Profile#3065
Deborah M. Gordon
#71565
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Deborah M. Gordon is an American biologist best known for her impactful research in the behavioral ecology of ants and her studies on the operations of ant colonies without a central control. In addition to overseeing The Gordon Lab, she is currently a Professor of Biology at Stanford University.
Go to Profile#3066
Werner Nachtigall
#30347
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Werner Nachtigall is a German zoologist and biologist. After graduating from high school in Augsburg, he studied at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in the fields of natural sciences biology, physics, chemistry and geography with a diploma in Technical Biology and Bionics. From 1959 to 1961, he was research assistant at the Radiobiology Institute in Neuherberg, later in the Zoological Institute of the University of Munich. His research interests during this time gave rise to questions that later led to the foundation of the field of bionics in Germany. In 1967, he was a visiting pro...
Go to Profile#3067
Elizabeth Arnold
#64701
Overall Influence
A. Elizabeth "Betsy" Arnold is an American evolutionary biologist who is Professor of Plant Sciences and Curator of the Robert L. Gilbertson Mycological Herbarium at the University of Arizona. Her research considers fungal biology. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021.
Go to Profile#3068
Shosaku Numa
#26340
Overall Influence
1929 - 1992 (63 years)
Shosaku Numa, ForMemRS was a Japanese neuroscientist known for his pioneering research on neurotransmitters and ion channels, and for his contributions to the understanding of molecular mechanisms of neural signalling.
Go to Profile#3069
Isabella Abbott
#41066
Overall Influence
1919 - 2010 (91 years)
Isabella Aiona Abbott was an educator, phycologist, and ethnobotanist from Hawaii. The first native Hawaiian woman to receive a PhD in science, she became a leading expert on Pacific marine algae. Early life Abbott was born Isabella Kauakea Yau Yung Aiona in Hana, Maui, Territory of Hawaii, on June 20, 1919. Her Hawaiian name means "white rain of Hana" and she was known as "Izzy". Her father was ethnically Chinese while her mother was a Native Hawaiian. Her mother taught her about edible Hawaiian seaweeds and the value and diversity of Hawaii's native plants. Abbott was the only girl and seco...
Go to Profile#3070
Jan Steyaert
#70514
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Jan Steyaert is a Belgian bioengineer and molecular biologist. He started his career as an enzymologist but the Steyaertlab is best known for pioneering work on nanobodies for applications in structural biology, omics and drug design. He is full professor and teaches biochemistry at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Director of the VIB-VUB Center for Structural Biology, one of the Research Centers of the Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie . He was involved in the foundation of three spin-off companies: Ablynx, Biotalys, and Confo Therapeutics.
Go to Profile#3071
Michael Turelli
#74538
Overall Influence
Michael Anthony Turelli is an American biologist who is Distinguished Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Davis. His research has focused on issues in quantitative genetics and on the Wolbachia genus of bacteria. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021. He was a Guggenheim Fellow at University College London in 1986.
Go to Profile#3072
Ashok Venkitaraman
#37625
Overall Influence
Ashok Venkitaraman is a British cancer researcher of Indian origin. He is the Director of the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, a Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore, and Program Director at A*STAR, Singapore. From 1998 to 2020, he was the inaugural holder of the Ursula Zoellner Professorship of Cancer Research at the University of Cambridge, a Professorial Fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and from 2006 to 2019, was the Director of the Medical Research Council Cancer Unit
Go to Profile#3073
Antoni Ribas
#74887
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Antoni Ribas is a Spanish-American physician–scientist. He is a Professor of Medicine, Surgery, and Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles and Director of the Tumor Immunology Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Ribas served as president of the American Association for Cancer Research in 2021–2022.
Go to Profile#3074
Thomas Philip Stroud Powell
#77310
Overall Influence
#3075
Johannes Buchner
#77316
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Johannes Buchner is a German biochemist and professor at the Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany. Career Buchner obtained his PhD at the University of Regensburg, Germany, working with Rainer Rudolph and Rainer Jaenicke. He performed his postdoctoral research in the lab of Ira Pastan at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA, before becoming assistant professor at the University of Regensburg and subsequently full professor and Chair of Biotechnology at the TUM.
Go to Profile#3076
Ihor R. Lemischka
#40828
Overall Influence
Ihor R. Lemischka was an American stem cell biologist and stem cell research advocate and was both the Lillian and Henry M. Stratton Professor of Gene and Cell Medicine and Director of the Black Family Stem Cell Institute at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.
Go to Profile#3077
George A. Bartholomew
#77213
Overall Influence
1919 - 2006 (87 years)
George Adelbert "Bart" Bartholomew was an American biologist. He was born in Independence, Missouri and earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. During the Second World War he served as a physicist in the U.S. Naval Bureau of Ordnance. He earned his PhD at Harvard University, but was associated during the rest of his long career, until his retirement in 1989, with the University of California, Los Angeles .
Go to Profile#3078
Yukiko Yamashita
#45673
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Yukiko Yamashita is an American developmental biologist. She joined the Whitehead Institute in September 2020 and has been appointed a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . She is the inaugural incumbent of the Susan Lindquist Chair for Women in Science at Whitehead Institute. She was previously a faculty member of the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute and a professor in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Michigan Medical School. She was appointed an HHMI Investigator in 2013. In November 2013 she received a 5-year ...
Go to Profile#3079
Larry R. Beuchat
#77398
Overall Influence
#3080
Robert Margolskee
#73906
Overall Influence
Robert F. Margolskee is an American academic. He is the director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center and adjunct professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Margolskee is also the a co-founder of Redpoint Bio. Margolskee has been a pioneer in the application of molecular biology and transgenic animal models to the study of taste transduction and chemosensation. He has made numerous seminal discoveries in the taste field, including the identification and molecular cloning of taste specific receptors, G proteins, channels and other taste signal transductio...
Go to Profile#3081
Rogers McVaugh
#62460
Overall Influence
1909 - 2009 (100 years)
Rogers McVaugh was a research professor of botany and the UNC Herbarium's curator of Mexican plants. He was also Adjunct Research Scientist of the Hunt Institute in Carnegie Mellon University and a Professor Emeritus of botany in the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Go to Profile#3082
Johannes W. Rohen
#43889
Overall Influence
1921 - 2022 (101 years)
Johannes Wolfgang Rohen was a German anatomist. Born in Münster on 18 September 1921, he was mostly known for his photographic atlas of human anatomy cadaver dissection, Color Atlas of Anatomy - A Photographic Study of the Human Body, one of the most widely used atlases in the field. It has been translated into 18 languages. The 18th translated language is Korean. Rohen died on 26 May 2022, at the age of 100.
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Mayana Zatz
#45763
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Mayana Zatz is a Brazilian molecular biologist and geneticist. She is a professor at the University of São Paulo, is its Research dean. Biography Professor Zatz's accomplishments have been recognized and she has received many awards and prizes, including the 2000 L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science and the 2001 Claudia Woman of the Year Award, by Claudia Magazine.
Go to Profile#3084
Gerald Hüther
#25764
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Gerald Hüther is a German neurobiologist and author of popular science books and other writings. He often gives talks to share his findings from neurobiology at conferences like TED, but he said that he won't give many more talks during his lifetime. He also took part on talk shows like Markus Lanz and Precht.
Go to Profile#3085
Christine Winterbourn
#75095
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Christine Coe Winterbourn is a New Zealand biochemist. She is a professor of pathology at the University of Otago, Christchurch. Her research in the biological chemistry of free radicals earned her the 2011 Rutherford Medal and the Marsden Medal, the top awards from each of New Zealand's two top science bodies.
Go to Profile#3086
Tullio Pozzan
#54661
Overall Influence
1949 - 2022 (73 years)
Tullio Pozzan was an Italian biochemist who was professor at the University of Padua and head of the department of biomedical sciences of the Italian National Research Council. Early life Pozzan was born in Venice on 22 February 1949. He was born into a family associated with the medical profession, including a grandfather whom he was named after. Pozzan studied Medicine at the University of Padua and received a doctor of medicine degree in 1973.
Go to Profile#3087
Jordan Grafman
#24046
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jordan Henry Grafman is an American neuropsychologist who serves as Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. He is also the Director of Brain Injury Research at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. Before joining Northwestern and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Grafman served as the director of Traumatic Brain Injury Research at the Kessler Foundation. He also served as Chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. His research primarily focuses on investigating the funct...
Go to Profile#3088
Arthur. Cronquist
#77483
Overall Influence
#3089
Julian Downward
#73204
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
David Julian Harry Downward FRS FMedSci is Associate Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute and Senior Group Leader at the Institute of Cancer Research. He was formerly head of the Signal transduction Laboratory at the London Research Institute. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Cell.
Go to Profile#3090
Jack Harlan
#67757
Overall Influence
1917 - 1998 (81 years)
Jack Rodney Harlan was an American botanist, agronomist, plant collector, and campaigner for crop plant biodiversity conservation. Early life Born in Washington, DC, Jack Harlan was the son of Harry Harlan, a plant breeder who worked on barley at the US Department of Agriculture , and who travelled around the world on seed collecting expeditions in search of new genetic material for use the USDA's crop breeding programs. Harry Harlan was a friend of the famous Russian plant breeding expert Nikolai Vavilov, and at the age of fifteen Jack Harlan met Vavilov when the latter stayed at the Harlan house during an international conference.
Go to Profile#3091
Jean Beggs
#62128
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jean Duthie Beggs CBE FRS FRSE DSc is a Scottish geneticist. She is the Royal Society Darwin Trust Professor in the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh. Biography Beggs was born Jean Duthie Lancaster on 16 April 1950 to Jean Crawford and William Renfrew Lancaster. She attended Glasgow High School for Girls. She graduated from the University of Glasgow with a BSc in Biochemistry in 1971, and received her PhD from the University in 1974. From 1974-1977 she held a postdoctoral position in the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Edinburgh working with Professors Kenneth and Noreen Murray.
Go to Profile#3092
Barbara Hohn
#65147
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Barbara Hohn ForMemRS is an Austrian molecular biologist, particularly known for her research into the Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Early life and education Hohn was born Barbara Freiinger, in Klagenfurt, Austria. From 1957 to 1962, she studied chemistry at the University of Vienna and then worked at the Max Planck Institute for Virus Research at the University of Tübingen, where she received her doctorate in 1967. Her PhD thesis supervisor was Professor Friedrich Freksa.
Go to Profile#3093
Hans Westerhoff
#62096
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Hans Victor Westerhoff is a Dutch biologist and biochemist who is professor of synthetic systems biology at the University of Amsterdam and AstraZeneca professor of systems biology at the University of Manchester. Currently he is a Chair of AstraZeneca and a director of the Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems Biology.
Go to Profile#3094
Wayne J. Katon
#77501
Overall Influence
#3095
William T. Carpenter
#32408
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
William T. Carpenter is an American psychiatrist, a pioneer in the fields of psychiatry and pharmacology who served as an expert witness in the John W. Hinckley trial for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. His primary professional interest is in severe mental illness, especially schizophrenia, to the prevention and treatment of which he has made significant contributions in psychopathology, assessment methodology, testing of new treatments, and research ethics.
Go to Profile#3096
David A. McCormick
#51600
Overall Influence
David Alan McCormick is an American neurobiologist. He holds one of two Presidential chair positions and is director of the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon and co-director of the Neurons to Minds Cluster of Excellence.
Go to Profile#3097
Michael Melkonian
#66561
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Michael Melkonian is a German botanist and professor of botany at the University of Cologne. Biography Michael Melkonian studied Biology at the University of Hamburg 1968–1978, receiving a Diploma degree in Botany in 1974. He remained in Hamburg to complete a doctorate in Botany in 1978. In 1978 he moved, as an Assistant Professor to the Botany Department at the University of Münster, where he stayed until his appointment as Full Professor and Chair of Botany at the University of Cologne in 1988. In 1982 he was Visiting Assistant Professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University .
Go to Profile#3098
Anna Christina Nobre
#21472
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Anna Christina Nobre FBA, MAE, fNASc is a Brazilian and British cognitive neuroscientist working at Yale University in New Haven, CT, USA. Nobre is a Wu Tsai Professor at Yale University, where she directs the Center for Neurocognition and Behavior at the Wu Tsai Institute. She is an honorary member of the Departments of Psychiatry and Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford; an honorary fellow of New College, Oxford; and an adjunct professor at the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#3099
Lutz Birnbaumer
#77597
Overall Influence
#3100
Wendy Gibson
#53617
Overall Influence
Wendy Gibson is Professor of Protozoology at University of Bristol, specialising in trypanosomes and molecular parasitology. Career Wendy C. Gibson studied B. Sc. Zoology at University College London, UK graduating in 1975 followed by a doctorate at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine that was awarded in 1979. She continued to work there with Wallace Peters for a short time after her doctorate. She was awarded DSc by the University of London in 1997.
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