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,
#3301
Laura Machesky
#75883
Overall Influence
Laura Machesky FRSE FMedSci is a British-American cancer research scientist currently based in the University of Cambridge. Professor Machesky is the Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Biochemistry, and the current president of the British Society for Cell Biology.
Go to Profile#3302
James E. Cleaver
#80590
Overall Influence
#3303
Keiko Torii
#58014
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
is a Japanese plant scientist and academic teaching at the University of Texas at Austin as of September 2019. Research Torii researches stem cell maintenance and the cell-to-cell communication required to correctly pattern tissue during development, focusing on stomatal development as a model. Her work on cell-to-cell communication has also focused on the mechanisms that determine organ size and shape in plants. Her achievements include discoveries of key signaling ligands, receptor kinase signaling pathways, and master regulatory transcription factors that specify stomatal patterning and differentiation.
Go to Profile#3304
Matthias Tschöp
#50924
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Matthias H. Tschöp is a German physician and scientist. He is the chief executive officer and scientific director of Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health. He is also Alexander von Humboldt Professor and chair of metabolic diseases at Technical University of Munich and serves as an adjunct professor at Yale University.
Go to Profile#3305
Rishikesh Narayanan
#39065
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Rishikesh Narayanan is an Indian neuroscientist, computer engineer and a professor at the Molecular Biophysics Unit of the Indian Institute of Science. He is the principal investigator at the Cellular Neurophysiology Laboratory of MBU where his team is engaged in researches on experimental and theoretical aspects of information processing in single neurons and their networks. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian ...
Go to Profile#3306
Niki Erlenmeyer-Kimling
#25296
Overall Influence
Niki Erlenmeyer-Kimling was a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and chief of the Division of Genetics at New York State Psychiatric Institute. Research Her research interests included genetic aspects of mental disorders and human behavior genetics generally. She conducted a longitudinal, prospective study of early indicators of later schizophrenia and a genetic-linkage, gene search study of schizophrenia in Croatia.
Go to Profile#3307
Paul E. Turner
#67961
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Paul E. Turner is an American evolutionary biologist and virologist, the Rachel Carson Professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, and a faculty member in microbiology at the Yale School of Medicine. His research focuses on the evolutionary genetics of viruses, particularly bacteriophages and RNA viruses transmitted by mosquitoes.
Go to Profile#3308
David Whitteridge
#57757
Overall Influence
1912 - 1994 (82 years)
David Whitteridge FRS FRSE FRCP was a 20th-century British physician and physiologist. Also an electrophysiologist, he was one of the first to demonstrate point to point relationship between nerve endings and specific points of activity within the brain.
Go to Profile#3309
Richard M. Myers
#77127
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Richard M. Myers is an American geneticist and biochemist known for his work on the Human Genome Project . The National Human Genome Research Institute says the HGP “[gave] the world a resource of detailed information about the structure, organization and function of the complete set of human genes.” Myers' genome center, in collaboration with the Joint Genome Institute, contributed more than 10 percent of the data in the project.
Go to Profile#3310
Donald Rusk Currey
#50142
Overall Influence
1934 - 2004 (70 years)
Donald Rusk Currey was an American professor of geography. While known in academia for his extensive research and exploration of relics of the ancient Lake Bonneville in the eastern Great Basin, he was best known to the public for his controversial felling of Prometheus, the oldest living non-clonal organism known at the time, while a graduate student in 1964.
Go to Profile#3311
Alejandro A. Rabinstein
#80685
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
#3312
Bette Korber
#35529
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Bette Korber is an American computational biologist focusing on the molecular biology and population genetics of the HIV virus that causes infection and eventually AIDS. She has contributed heavily to efforts to obtain an effective HIV vaccine. She created a database at Los Alamos National Laboratory that has enabled her to design novel mosaic HIV vaccines, one of which is currently in human testing in Africa. The database contains thousands of HIV genome sequences and related data.
Go to Profile#3313
Thomas G. Spiro
#80712
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
#3314
Bryan M. Turner
#75986
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Bryan M. Turner is Professor of Experimental Genetics at School of Cancer Sciences, Institute of Biomedical Research, University of Birmingham in Birmingham, UK. He was educated at University College London, where he earned his BSc in Biochemistry and PhD in Human Biochemical Genetics . Before moving to Birmingham University in 1981, he was at the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill and the Mt Sinai School of Medicine in New York .
Go to Profile#3315
Martin Hume Johnson
#49097
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Martin Hume Johnson is emeritus professor of Reproductive Sciences in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. Education Johnson was educated at Cheltenham Grammar School for Boys and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in 1969 for immunochemical analysis of factors affecting fertility.
Go to Profile#3316
Isabel Gauthier
#48555
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Isabel Gauthier is a cognitive neuroscientist currently holding the position of David K. Wilson Professor of Psychology and head of the Object Perception Lab at Vanderbilt University’s Department of Psychology. In 2000, with the support of the James S. McDonnell Foundation, she founded the Perceptual Expertise Network , which now comprises over ten labs based across North America. In 2006 PEN became part of the NSF-funded Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center .
Go to Profile#3317
John A. Jane
#15981
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
John A. Jane, Sr. was an American neurosurgeon, and Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Virginia. He was Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Virginia from 1969 to 2006.
Go to Profile#3318
Angela Rasmussen
#25659
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Angela Lynn Rasmussen is an American virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. Education and early career During graduate school, Rasmussen worked in the laboratory of Vincent Racaniello where she developed a mouse model of rhinovirus infection in order to better understand the pathogenesis of illnesses caused by the virus, such as the common cold.
Go to Profile#3319
William Allen Banks
#80792
Overall Influence
#3320
Talma Hendler
#55510
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Talma Hendler is a psychiatrist and researcher in neuroscience and one of the pioneers in the field of functional imaging of the brain in Israel. Her research focuses on understanding emotion, particularly in the context of human interactions with each other and when facing distressing life events.
Go to Profile#3321
Melissa Cristina Márquez
#37786
Overall Influence
Melissa Cristina Márquez is a Puerto Rican marine biologist and science communicator. She studies chondrichthyan fishes, including great white sharks. Early life and education Márquez was inspired to study sharks when she first saw a great white shark on the Discovery Channel program Shark Week when she moved from Mexico to the United States. She completed her undergraduate degree at the New College of Florida in Sarasota, Florida, and a master's degree from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
Go to Profile#3322
Nobuo Suga
#65257
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Nobuo Suga is a Japanese biologist noted for his research on the neurophysiology of hearing, and echolocation in bats. Life After earning a bachelor's degree in biology at Tokyo Metropolitan University in 1958, Nobuo studied for his doctoral thesis on the neurophysiology of hearing with Yatsuji Katsuki at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University. His early research attracted the attention of Vincent Wigglesworth of Cambridge University, a prominent insect researcher, and Donald Griffin of Harvard University, who studied bats. From there, his career took him to UCLA and UC San Diego School of Medicine, before finally arriving at Washington University in St.
Go to Profile#3323
Soldano Ferrone
#80855
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
#3324
Unidan
#44138
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Ben Eisenkop, better known by his Reddit pseudonym Unidan, is an American ecologist. He became popular on the social media website Reddit as the "excited biologist" who answered questions and explained concepts related to biology and ecology before being banned. He was banned from the website for vote fraud – using multiple secret accounts to increase the popularity of his own posts and decrease the popularity of competitors' posts.
Go to Profile#3325
John Francis Nunn
#80916
Overall Influence
#3326
Mehmet Toner
#11729
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Mehmet Toner is a Turkish biomedical engineer. He is currently the Helen Andrus Benedict Professor of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, with a joint appointment as professor at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology .
Go to Profile#3327
Robert G. Ackman
#80981
Overall Influence
#3328
William Seeley
#38452
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
William W. Seeley is an American neurologist. He is a Professor of Neurology and Pathology at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco . He leads the Selective Vulnerability Research Lab at UCSF. He is a 2011 MacArthur Fellow.
Go to Profile#3329
Frederick K. Goodwin
#14334
Overall Influence
1936 - 2020 (84 years)
Frederick King Goodwin was an American psychiatrist and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center, where he was also director of the Center on Neuroscience, Medical Progress, and Society. He was a specialist in bipolar disorder and recurrent depression.
Go to Profile#3330
Dana Pe'er
#44301
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Dana Pe'er , Chair and Professor in Computational and Systems Biology Program at Sloan Kettering Institute is a researcher in computational systems biology. A Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 2021, she was previously a professor at Columbia Department of Biological Sciences. Pe'er's research focuses on understanding the organization, function and evolution of molecular networks, particularly how genetic variations alter the regulatory network and how these genetic variations can cause cancer.
Go to Profile#3331
Andrzej Bartke
#81091
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
#3332
Otto Kinne
#60989
Overall Influence
1923 - 2015 (92 years)
Otto Kinne was a German marine biologist. He was director of Germany's Biologische Anstalt Helgoland from 1962 to 1984. From 1967 he was a professor at the University of Kiel. He established the Inter-Research Science Center in 1979 and is its Director, and the International Ecology Institute in 1984, of which he was the President. The IRSC publishes eight international journals of which Kinne is the founder, including Marine Ecology Progress Series and Climate Research. He established the Otto Kinne Foundation in 1992 to provide grants to ecologists in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Go to Profile#3333
William D. McElroy
#54715
Overall Influence
1917 - 1999 (82 years)
William David McElroy was an American biochemist and academic administrator. Biography Early years McElroy was born to William D. McElroy and Ora Shipley in Rogers, Texas. After graduating from McAllen High School in McAllen, Texas in 1935, he attended Pasadena Junior College in California, and went on to Stanford University on a football scholarship where he received his bachelor's degree in 1937. He earned his master's degree in biology at Reed College and his PhD at Princeton University in 1943.
Go to Profile#3334
Anne Osbourn
#68054
Overall Influence
Anne Elisabeth Osbourn is a professor of biology and group leader at the John Innes Centre, where she investigates plant natural product biosynthesis. She discovered that in the plant genome, the genes involved with biosynthesis organise in clusters. She is also a popular science communicator, poet and is the founder of the Science, Art and Writing Initiative. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Go to Profile#3335
John J. McGrath
#81135
Overall Influence
#3336
Michael John Bevan
#81137
Overall Influence
#3337
Ottoline Leyser
#43759
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Dame Henrietta Miriam Ottoline Leyser is a British plant biologist and Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge, Chief Executive Officer of UK Research and Innovation and the Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#3338
Robert J. Genco
#81144
Overall Influence
1938 - 2019 (81 years)
#3339
Igor Stagljar
#73437
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Igor Stagljar is a Croatian-born Canadian molecular biologist and an expert in the field of proteomics, cancer cell signalling and COVID-19 serological testing. He is a professor of Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at Donnelly Centre at the Medical School of the University of Toronto, and is also a Co-Director and Laboratory Head at the Mediterranean Institute of Life Sciences in Split . He received a BSc. from the University of Zagreb , and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from ETH Zurich .
Go to Profile#3340
Albert Herz
#81158
Overall Influence
#3341
Donald J. Hanahan
#81160
Overall Influence
#3342
Anne E. Pusey
#41884
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Anne Elizabeth Pusey is director of the Jane Goodall Institute Research Center and a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. Since the early 1990s, Pusey has been archiving the data collected from the Gombe chimpanzee project. The collection housed at Duke University consists of a computerized database that Pusey oversees. In addition to archiving Jane Goodall’s research from Gombe, she is involved in field study and advising students at Gombe . She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Go to Profile#3343
Andrey Kursanov
#45696
Overall Influence
1902 - 1999 (97 years)
Andrey Lvovich Kursanov was a Soviet specialist on the physiology and biochemistry of plants. He was an academician of the Soviet and Russian Academies of Sciences since 1953. He was a member of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1957–1963.
Go to Profile#3344
Emilio Bizzi
#25592
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Emilio Bizzi is a neuroscientist and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an investigator of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and a faculty member in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He received his MD from the University of Rome in 1958 and his PhD from the University of Pisa in 1968. In Pisa, he performed seminal measurements of brain waves during sleep.
Go to Profile#3345
Satyabrata Sarkar
#50951
Overall Influence
1928 - 2022 (94 years)
Satyabrata Sarkar, , is a scientist, investigating physiological phenomena in plants and then studying the structure and function of plant-pathogenic viruses in the Max-Planck-Institute for Biology in Tübingen and at the University of Hohenheim in Germany. Later on he was teaching Bengali language and literature in the Department of Indology of the University of Tübingen. On 11 December 2022 he died aged 94.
Go to Profile#3346
Max Beauvoir
#28720
Overall Influence
1936 - 2015 (79 years)
Max Gesner Beauvoir was a Haitian biochemist and houngan. Beauvoir held one of the highest titles of Voudou priesthood, Ati or "Supreme Serviteur" , a title given to Houngans and Mambos who have a great and very deep knowledge of the religion, and status within the religion. As Supreme Serviteur, Max was seen as a high authority within Vodou.
Go to Profile#3347
Jamie A. Davies
#62328
Overall Influence
Jamie A. Davies FRSE FLSW is a British scientist, Professor of Experimental Anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, and leader of a laboratory in its Centre for Integrative Physiology. He works in the fields of Developmental biology, Synthetic biology, and Tissue engineering. He is also Principal Investigator for the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to Pharmacology database.
Go to Profile#3348
Mildred Esther Mathias
#60518
Overall Influence
1906 - 1995 (89 years)
Mildred Esther Mathias was an American botanist and professor. She was a professor at UCLA from 1962 until 1974. She also served as president of the American Society for Plant Taxonomists and the Botanical Society of America.
Go to Profile#3349
Hákon Hákonarson
#80931
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Hákon Hákonarson is an Icelandic genomics researcher and physician. He is the founder and director of the Center for Applied Genomics, endowed chair in genomics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#3350
Denis Owen
#69922
Overall Influence
1931 - 1996 (65 years)
Denis Frank Owen was a British ecologist, naturalist, author, broadcaster and teacher. Education Denis Owen was born in London. He was a student at Roan Grammar School in Greenwich, which he left when he was 16, but eventually he graduated from Oxford University.
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