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,
#3351
Gerd Heusch
#74511
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Gerd Heusch is a German physician, physiologist, and professor as well as chair of the Institute for Pathophysiology at the University of Essen Medical School. Biography Heusch attended the Medical Schools at the Universities of Düsseldorf and Bonn, where he graduated in 1979 and received his MD degree in 1980. Following obligatory military service as medical officer, he was postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology at the University of Düsseldorf Medical School where he completed his PhD in 1985. From 1985 to 1986 Heusch was research cardiologist at the University of California, San Diego under the mentorship of Dr.
Go to Profile#3352
Viviane Slon
#56253
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Viviane Slon is a paleogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. She identified that a teenage girl born 90,000 years ago had both Neanderthal and Denisovan parents. She was selected as one of Nature's 10 in 2018.
Go to Profile#3353
Colin Chapman
#42582
Overall Influence
Colin A. Chapman is a professor at the Vancouver Island University in British Columbia, Canada. In addition, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, an Honorary Lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda, a Member of the Committee of Research and Exploration at National Geographic, and an Associate Scientists of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. Prior to taking on his position at McGill University, he was at the University of Florida in the Department of Zoology from 1993 to 2004. He is internationally recognized for his 30+ years of research into primate ecology, populat...
Go to Profile#3354
Nouria Hernandez
#39277
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Nouria Hernandez is a Swiss biologist and the rector of the University of Lausanne . She was professor of molecular biology at the University of Lausanne from 2004 to 2016. Life and career Nouria Hernandez studied at the University of Geneva and received a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg . From 1983 to 1986, she then worked at the Yale University. In 1987, she was nominated group leader at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and, in 1988, became professor at the Watson School of Biological Sciences.
Go to Profile#3355
Carlo Montemagno
#14918
Overall Influence
1956 - 2018 (62 years)
Carlo Montemagno was an American engineer and expert in nanotechnology and biomedical engineering, focusing on futuristic technologies to create interdisciplinary solutions for the grand challenges in health, energy and the environment. He has been considered one of the pioneers of bionanotechnology. Some of his fundamental contributions include the development of biomolecular motors for powering inorganic nanodevices while at Cornell and muscle-driven self-assembled nanodevices while at UCLA.
Go to Profile#3356
Emil Skamene
#68862
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Emil Skamene, is a Canadian Immunologist and medical researcher. He is the Director of Research for the McGill University Health Centre, the Director of the Centre for the Study of Host Resistance, and a Professor in the Department of Medicine, the Department of Human Genetics, and the Institute of Parasitology.
Go to Profile#3357
Barbara York Main
#59743
Overall Influence
1929 - 2019 (90 years)
Barbara Anne York Main was an Australian arachnologist and adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia. The author of four books and over 90 research papers, Main is recognised for her prolific work in establishing taxonomy for arachnids, personally describing 34 species and seven new genera. The BBC and ABC produced a film about her work, Lady of the Spiders, in 1981.
Go to Profile#3358
David Read
#48232
Overall Influence
Sir David Read, FRS, is Emeritus Professor of Plant Science in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield. His first degree and PhD came from the University of Hull, the latter in 1963. He also serves on the Rothamsted Research Board of Directors.
Go to Profile#3359
Fred W. Allendorf
#79759
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Frederick William Allendorf is an American biologist who is the Regents Professor of Biology Emeritus at the University of Montana. He has published widely on the topics of population genetics and conservation biology. Among other organisms, Allendorf has written extensively about salmon.
Go to Profile#3360
Thomas Turner
#45347
Overall Influence
1902 - 2002 (100 years)
Thomas B. Turner was an American microbiologist who worked as the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine from 1957 to 1968. Early life and education Turner was born in Prince Frederick, Maryland. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from St. John's College from the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#3361
Matthew Meyerson
#69449
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Matthew Langer Meyerson is an American pathologist and the Charles A. Dana Chair in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He is also director of the Center for Cancer Genomics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Director of Cancer Genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Go to Profile#3362
R. Michael Roberts
#73939
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
R. Michael Roberts is an American biologist who is the Chancellor's Professor Emeritus of Animal sciences and Biochemistry at the University of Missouri. He is a founding co-editor of the Annual Review of Animal Biosciences, first published in 2013.
Go to Profile#3363
Claire Kremen
#40151
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Claire Kremen is an American conservation biologist. She is a professor of conservation biology at the University of British Columbia, having formerly worked at the University of California, Berkeley, where she remains professor emerita.
Go to Profile#3364
Katsuhiko Mikoshiba
#81422
Overall Influence
#3365
Helmut Beinert
#58540
Overall Influence
1913 - 2007 (94 years)
Helmut Beinert was a professor in the biochemistry department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focused on the mechanism of enzymes, in particular metalloenzymes and iron-sulfur proteins. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1980.
Go to Profile#3366
Patrick F. Fox
#81440
Overall Influence
#3367
Cinzia Verde
#57952
Overall Influence
Cinzia Verde is an Italian researcher in marine biochemistry at the National Research Council , Institute of Biosciences and BioResources . Early life and education Verde received her Degree in Biological Sciences cum laude from the University of Naples in 1987.
Go to Profile#3368
Geoffrey Fryer
#70372
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Geoffrey Fryer is a British biologist. Education Huddersfield College, and University of London. Personal life Married Vivienne Hodgson, 1953. One son [1961] and one daughter [1963]. Career Deputy Chief Scientific Officer, Windermere Laboratory, Freshwater Biological Association 1981-1988. Honorary Professor, University of Lancaster since 1988.
Go to Profile#3369
Mary Kalin Arroyo
#66531
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Dr. Mary Therese Kalin-Arroyo was born in 1944 in New Zealand. She is currently a professor of biology at the University of Chile. Kalin-Arroyo is notable for revising the indigenous genus Ourisia and discovering several new species in New Zealand. Her studies have also led to the designation of central Chile as a biodiversity hotspot.
Go to Profile#3370
David A. Wardle
#79680
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
David A. Wardle is a Swedish-New Zealand ecologist. He is currently working as the Smithsonian Professor of Forest Ecology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. After obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Canterbury he completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree under Dennis Parkinson at the University of Calgary in 1989, and then worked in New Zealand at Landcare Research before moving to the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Umeå. Wardle is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
Go to Profile#3371
Anthony P. Bretscher
#75435
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Anthony P. Bretscher is a professor of cell biology at Cornell University in the Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics in the College of Arts and Sciences. After training as a physicist at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Bretscher earned his Ph.D. in genetics with Simon Baumberg at the University of Leeds. From there, he was a European Molecular Biology Organization Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University with Dale Kaiser. He then went as a Max Planck Society Fellow to the Department of Biochemistry in the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany to work with Klaus Weber.
Go to Profile#3372
J. Drew Lanham
#27786
Overall Influence
Joseph Drew Lanham is an American author, poet and wildlife biologist who in 2022 entered the MacArthur Fellows Program for his work "combining conservation science with personal, historical, and cultural narratives of nature." Raised in Edgefield, South Carolina, Lanham studied zoology and ecology at Clemson University, where he earned a PhD in 1997. Lanham received his B.A. and M.S. in zoology, and his Ph.D. in Forest Resources. He also currently holds an endowed chair as an Alumni Distinguished Professor. He was also named an alumni master teacher in 2012. He is currently a professor of wildlife science and teaches several classes and lectures on birding.
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Michael Woodruff
#22644
Overall Influence
1911 - 2001 (90 years)
Sir Michael Francis Addison Woodruff, was an English surgeon and scientist principally remembered for his research into organ transplantation. Though born in London, Woodruff spent his youth in Australia, where he earned degrees in electrical engineering and medicine. Having completed his studies shortly after the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Australian Army Medical Corps, but was soon captured by Japanese forces and imprisoned in the Changi Prison Camp. While there, he devised an ingenious method of extracting nutrients from agricultural wastes to prevent malnutrition among his f...
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Richard Perham
#61600
Overall Influence
1937 - 2015 (78 years)
Richard Nelson Perham, FRS, FMedSci, FRSA , was Professor of biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, and Master of St John's College, Cambridge 2004–07. He was also editor-in-chief of FEBS Journal from 1998 to 2013.
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Jan Mohr
#65152
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
Jan Gunnar Faye Mohr was a Norwegian-Danish physician and geneticist, known for his discovery of the first cases of autosomal genetic linkage in man, between the Lutheran blood groups and the ABH-secretor system, and between these and the hereditary disease myotonic dystrophy. Besides being first steps in mapping the human genome, the findings illustrated the medical potential of linkage analysis in prenatal genetic diagnosis. Mohr is eponymously known by the syndrome Mohr-Tranebjærg, a progressive deafness with X-linked mode of inheritance, which was first described by Jan Mohr, and then more comprehensively by Tranebjærg et al.
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G. E. Berrios
#30749
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Germán Elías Berríos FMedSci, FRCPsych is a professor of Psychiatry at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. Life Berrios was born in Tacna, Peru, and studied medicine and philosophy at the University of San Marcos. He read Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was a scholar by examination and obtained a BA in 1970. Then he trained in history and philosophy of science under A. Crombie, C. Webster and R. Harré earning a D.Phil. Sci. in 1972 and a MA in 1974. Between 1973 and 1976 he was a Lecturer in Psychiatry at the University of Leeds. In 1977 he obtained a M.A.
Go to Profile#3377
Robley C. Williams
#50287
Overall Influence
1908 - 1995 (87 years)
Robley Cook Williams was an early biophysicist and virologist. He served as the first president of the Biophysical Society. Career Williams attended Cornell University on an athletic scholarship, completing a B.S. in 1931 and a Ph.D. in physics in 1935. While at Cornell, he was selected for membership in the Telluride House and the Quill and Dagger society. Williams began his career as a researcher as an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan, and from 1945, associate professor of physics. A growing fascination with viruses led him to leave Michigan in 1950, when he wa...
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Joan Roughgarden
#61436
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Joan Roughgarden is an American ecologist and evolutionary biologist. She has engaged in theory and observation of coevolution and competition in Anolis lizards of the Caribbean, and recruitment limitation in the rocky intertidal zones of California and Oregon. She has more recently become known for her rejection of sexual selection, her theistic evolutionism, and her work on holobiont evolution.
Go to Profile#3379
Gregory Retallack
#62069
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Gregory John Retallack is an Australian paleontologist, geologist, and author who specializes in the study of fossil soils . His research has examined the fossil record of soils though major events in Earth history, extending back some 4.6 billion years. Among his publications he has written two standard paleopedology textbooks, said N. Jones in Nature Geoscience "Retallack has literally written the book on ancient soils."
Go to Profile#3380
Jennifer Raff
#43239
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Jennifer Anne Raff is an American geneticist and an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. She specializes in anthropological genetics relating to the initial peopling of the Americas and subsequent prehistory of Indigenous populations throughout North America. She is the President of the American Association of Anthropological Genetics. Alongside her research, Raff is a science communicator who writes and gives public talks about topics in science literacy.
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Ehab Abouheif
#78785
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Ehab Abouheif , is a Canadian biologist and Professor in the Department of Biology at McGill University. He is a specialist in integrating ecology, evolutionary, and developmental biology of ant societies in order to understand the origins and evolution of complex biological systems. He served as founding President of the Pan-American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology, as well as co-founder for the McGill Centre for Islam and Science.
Go to Profile#3382
Frederick Redlich
#15808
Overall Influence
1910 - 2004 (94 years)
Frederick Carl Redlich was a psychiatrist and academic administrator. He was dean of the Yale School of Medicine from 1967 to 1972. Personal life Redlich was born in Vienna, the son of Ludwig Johann and Emma Redlich, and received his M.D. in 1935 from the University of Vienna. Following graduation, Redlich was an intern at Vienna General Hospital and a psychiatric resident at Vienna University Clinic . He moved to the United States in 1938 with his wife Elsa . They had two sons, Erik Christopher , and Peter J. 195?. They became U.S. citizen in 1943. Later Fritz married operatic mezzo-sopra...
Go to Profile#3383
Robert T. Schimke
#81644
Overall Influence
#3384
Norman E. Rosenthal
#8756
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Norman E. Rosenthal is an American author, psychiatrist and scientist who first described seasonal affective disorder , and developed light therapy as a treatment. Rosenthal was born and educated in South Africa but moved to the United States to complete his medical training. He established a private practice and conducted research at the National Institute of Mental Health as a researcher and senior researcher for more than twenty years. It was here that he studied disorders of mood, sleep, and biological rhythms and was the first psychiatrist to describe and diagnose seasonal affective diso...
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Nancy A. Moran
#37634
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
For the American folk-rock singer-songwriter, see Nancy Moran. Nancy A. Moran is an American evolutionary biologist and entomologist, University of Texas Leslie Surginer Endowed Professor, and co-founder of the Yale Microbial Diversity Institute. Since 2005, she has been a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. Her seminal research has focused on the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum and its bacterial symbionts including Buchnera . In 2013, she returned to the University of Texas at Austin, where she continues to conduct research on bacterial symbionts in aphids, bees, and other insect species.
Go to Profile#3386
Andrew W. Murray
#72121
Overall Influence
Andrew W. Murray is a British-born American evolutionary biologist known for his research on budding yeast. He is the Herchel Smith Professor of Molecular Genetics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor at Harvard University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014.
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Melissa J. Moore
#66615
Overall Influence
Melissa J. Moore is an American biochemist who focuses on RNA. She was the Chief Scientific Officer of Moderna from 2016-2023, where her team contributed to the development of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
Go to Profile#3388
Douglas Richman
#68464
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Douglas D. Richman is an American infectious diseases physician and medical virologist. Richman's work has focused on the HIV/AIDS pandemic, since its appearance in the early 1980s. His major contributions have been in the areas of treatment, drug resistance, and pathogenicity.
Go to Profile#3389
Dr. Derek Leroith
#81746
Overall Influence
#3390
Nader Rifai
#81758
Overall Influence
#3391
George Winokur
#81773
Overall Influence
#3392
Anne Beloff-Chain
#36864
Overall Influence
1921 - 1991 (70 years)
Anne Ethel Beloff-Chain, Lady Chain was a British biochemist. She worked at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità , Imperial College London and the University of Buckingham . Her research focused on carbohydrate metabolism and the hormones involved in diabetes and obesity.
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Otto Rössler
#39836
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Otto Eberhard Rössler is a German biochemist known for his work on chaos theory and the theoretical equation known as the Rössler attractor. He is best known to the general public for his involvement in a failed lawsuit to halt the Large Hadron Collider due to fears that it would generate mini black holes.
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Richard Passingham
#64698
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Richard Edward Passingham is a British neuroscientist. He is an international authority on the frontal lobe mechanisms for decision making and executive control. He is amongst the most highly cited neuroscientists.
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Barbara Lynette Rye
#77462
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Barbara Lynette Rye is an Australian botanist born in 1952. Barbara Rye has been associated with the Western Australian Herbarium, where her work as a taxonomist has been the source of many new descriptions of plants. The number of taxa recorded as described by women authors is historically very low, of the terrestrial plant species this amount is around three percent, yet in analysis published in 2019 Rye is amongst the ten most prolific women taxonomists.
Go to Profile#3396
Alexei Verkhratsky
#80337
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Alexei Verkhratsky, sometimes spelled Alexej, is a professor of neurophysiology at the University of Manchester best known for his research on the physiology and pathophysiology of neuroglia, calcium signalling, and brain ageing. He is an elected member and vice-president of Academia Europaea, of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, of the Real Academia Nacional de Farmacia , of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, of Polish Academy of Sciences, and Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, among others. Since 2010, he is a Ikerbasque Research Professor and from 2012 he is deputy director of the Achucarro Basque Center for Neuroscience in Bilbao.
Go to Profile#3397
John Stein
#30257
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
John Frederick Stein is a British physiologist. He is a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and holds a professorship in physiology at the University of Oxford. He has research interests in the neurological basis of dyslexia.
Go to Profile#3398
David C. Rubinsztein
#78955
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
David Chaim Rubinsztein FRS FMedSci is the Deputy Director of the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research , Professor of Molecular Neurogenetics at the University of Cambridge and a UK Dementia Research Institute Professor.
Go to Profile#3399
Hesham Sallam
#20441
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Hesham Sallam is an Egyptian paleontologist and the founder of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center , the first vertebrate paleontology program in the Middle East. He works as an associate professor at the American University in Cairo and Mansoura University. Sallam led the discovery and description of Mansourasaurus shahinae, a species of sauropod dinosaur from Egypt, which has improved understanding of the prehistory of Africa during the latest Cretaceous period. His work has helped popularize paleontology in Egypt.
Go to Profile#3400
Bryan Grenfell
#68353
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Bryan Thomas Grenfell is a British population biologist and the Kathryn Briger and Sarah Fenton Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Public Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
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