Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#3401

Olaf Blanke

#23770

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Olaf Blanke is a Swiss and German physician, neurologist and neuroscientist. He holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Cognitive Neuroprosthetics at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . He directs the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Brain Mind Institute of EPFL and is professor of Neurology at Geneva University Hospitals. Blanke is known for his research on the neurological bases of self-consciousness and out-of-body experiences.

#3402

Catherine Laure Rivier

#81872

Overall Influence

#3403

Richard A. Andersen

#50841

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Richard Alan Andersen is an American neuroscientist. He is the James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. His research focuses on visual physiology with an emphasis on translational research to humans in the field of neuroprosthetics, brain-computer interfaces, and cortical repair.

#3404

S. Joshua Swamidass

#42457

Overall Influence

S. Joshua Swamidass is an American computational biologist, physician, academic, and author. He is an associate professor of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine, and a Faculty Lead of Translational Bioinformatics in the Institute for Informatics at Washington University in St. Louis.

#3405

Nenad Ban

#62605

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Nenad Ban is a biochemist born in Zagreb, Croatia who currently works at the ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, as a professor of Structural Molecular Biology. He is a pioneer in studying gene expression mechanisms and the participating protein synthesis machinery.

#3406

Claude Alvin Villee Jr.

#60947

Overall Influence

1917 - 2003 (86 years)

Claude Alvin Villee Jr. was an American biologist and long-time teacher at Harvard University. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Villee studied in the Franklin and Marshall College and later the University of California. He began teaching in 1941 at Berkeley as a research assistant before becoming an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina. He wrote his first book during this period, on request: a biology textbook that eventually saw eight editions and translation into six languages. Thereafter, Villee worked at Harvard University as a teacher from 1946 until his retirement as Andelot Professor of Biological Chemistry in 1991.

#3407

Harold M. Weintraub

#62029

Overall Influence

1945 - 1995 (50 years)

Harold M. "Hal" Weintraub was an American scientist who lived from 1945 until his death in 1995 from an aggressive brain tumor. Only 49 years old, Weintraub left behind a legacy of research. Early life and education Born on June 2, 1945, in Newark, New Jersey, Weintraub's childhood revolved around sports, including basketball, an activity he would continue to particularly relish throughout his adult life. Weintraub was also the pitcher for an all-city high school baseball team, and a football fullback.

#3408

Peter Boag

#81987

Overall Influence

Peter Boag is a professor emeritus of genetics at Queen's University. He specializes in molecular ecology. In 2001, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

#3409

Joseph V. Brady

#35022

Overall Influence

1922 - 2011 (89 years)

Joseph Vincent Brady was an American psychologist, neuroscientist, and pioneer of behavioral pharmacology. In addition to his status as a founder of behavioral pharmacology, he made significant contributions in the areas of drug abuse and treatment, space exploration, and human research ethics.

#3410

Con Slobodchikoff

#34552

Overall Influence

Constantine "Con" Slobodchikoff is an animal behaviorist and conservation biologist. He is a professor at Northern Arizona University where he studies referential communication, using Gunnison's prairie dogs as a model species. Much of his recent research has shown a complex communicative ability of the Gunnison prairie dog alarm calls. In early 2008 he formed the Animal language Institute to create a place where people can find and share research in animal communication, including language.

#3411

Bernard Zinman

#71004

Overall Influence

Bernard Zinman is a Canadian clinical and research endocrinologist, whose research at the University of Toronto focuses on type 1 and type 2 diabetes. He directed the Mount Sinai Hospital Leadership Sinai Centre for Diabetes and the Banting and Best Diabetes Centre . In 2019, he was appointed as an Officer to the Order of Canada in recognition of his scientific contributions, including the development of preventative therapies for diabetes.

#3412

Paola Arlotta

#36562

Overall Influence

Paola Arlotta is the Golub Family Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University and chair of the Harvard Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology . Her research focuses on the development of neuron types in the cerebral cortex. She is best known for her work using 3D cerebral organoids derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells to study cortical development in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders.

#3413

Steven Frank

#74754

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Steven A. Frank is a professor of biology at the University of California, Irvine. His areas of expertise are evolutionary genetics, host-parasite interactionss and social evolution. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1987.

#3414

Isabel Morgan

#61220

Overall Influence

1911 - 1996 (85 years)

Isabel Merrick Morgan was an American virologist at Johns Hopkins University, who prepared an experimental vaccine that protected monkeys against polio in a research team with David Bodian and Howard A. Howe. Their research led to the identification of three distinct serotypes of poliovirus, all of which must be incorporated for a vaccine to provide complete immunity from poliomyelitis. Morgan was the first to successfully use a killed-virus for polio inoculation in monkeys. After she married in 1949, she left the field of polio research in part because she was uncomfortable with trials that tested polio vaccines on the nerve tissue of children.

#3415

Viviana Simon

#21209

Overall Influence

Viviana Simon is a Professor of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai . She is a member of the ISMMS Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute. Her research considers viral-host interactions and the mode of action of retroviral restriction factors. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Simon developed an antibody test that can determine immunity to Coronavirus disease 2019.

#3416

Rolf Santesson

#76731

Overall Influence

1916 - 2013 (97 years)

Rolf Santesson was a Swedish lichenologist and university lecturer. He was awarded the Acharius Medal in 1992 for his lifetime contributions to lichenology. Early life and education Santesson was born in 1916 in Trollhättan, Sweden. He was already collecting lichens as a student, investigating the lichen flora of the table mountains of Halleberg and Hunneberg near his home. He entered the University of Uppsala in the 1930s to study botany. It was here he met the flamboyant Professor of Plant Ecology and lichen taxonomist Gustaf Einar Du Rietz, with whom he undertook studies on crustose lichens found on shoreline rocks of Swedish lakes.

#3417

David Alan Hopwood

#82128

Overall Influence

#3418

Maciej Żylicz

#54601

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Maciej Żylicz is a Polish biochemist and molecular biologist, professor at the University of Gdańsk, director of the Foundation for Polish Science, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, State Committee for Scientific Research and a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Learning.

#3419

Pabitra Kumar Sen

#43744

Overall Influence

1906 - 1997 (91 years)

Pabitra Kumar Sen was the Khaira Professor of Agriculture, Calcutta University, and founder of the College of Agriculture at Calcutta University in the 1950s. Sen obtained his doctoral degree from the Imperial College in London, England in the 1920s and served as plant physiologist and horticulturist under the British India government during the 1930s in Sabore, Bihar, India. He was invited by Syama Prasad Mookerjee to start a college. He was highly influenced by Gandhi and Tagore and worked on village reconstruction in Santiniketan during the 1940s. He founded Seva-Bharati, in the village o...

#3420

Marcus Thomas Pius Gilbert

#68885

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Marcus Thomas Pius Gilbert is an evolutionary biologist. His work is highly cited, and influential in the fields of palaeogenomics, evolutionary genomics and evolutionary hologenomics. He is currently the director of the University of Copenhagen's Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics

#3421

Michael Boehnke

#45669

Overall Influence

Michael Lee Boehnke is an American geneticist. He is the Richard G. Cornell Distinguished University Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where he also directs the Center for Statistical Genetics. His research focuses on the genetic dissection of complex traits; in a career spanning 25 years, he has developed methods for analysis of human pedigrees, examined the history of breast cancer in genetically at risk individuals, and contributed important discoveries on the genetics of type 2 diabetes and related traits, such as obesity and blood lipid leve...

#3422

Brendan Bohannan

#45082

Overall Influence

Brendan J. M. Bohannan is a microbial and evolutionary biologist. He is a professor of Environmental Studies and Biology at the director of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Oregon. He is a contributor to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He is an Alec and Kay Keith Professor at the University of Oregon. In 2019, along with colleagues Karen Guillemin, Judith Eisen and biophysicist Raghuveer Parthasarathy, Bohannan was awarded a $7.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to research the potential health benefits of Bacteria. He is one ...

#3423

Michael Owen

#70452

Overall Influence

Sir Michael John Owen FRCPsych FMedSci FLSW is a Welsh research scientist in the area of psychiatry, currently the head of the Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences at Cardiff University.

#3424

Jonathan Dordick

Jonathan Dordick

#35873

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Jonathan S. Dordick is an institute professor of chemical and biological engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and holds joint appointments in the departments of biomedical engineering and biological sciences. In 2008 he became director of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies. In 2012 Dordick became the vice president for research at RPI. He became Special Advisor to the RPI President for Strategic Initiatives in 2018,

#3425

Elsayed Saad Eldin Hafez

#82229

Overall Influence

#3426

Ralph Isberg

#73143

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Ralph R. Isberg is a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine known for his contributions to understanding microbial pathogenesis. He is a member of the American National Academy of Sciences and was an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for 27 years. A microbiologist, Isberg has published over 185 peer-reviewed articles and is or has been an editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, PLoS Pathogens, and Journal of Experimental Medicine, among others.

#3427

Petr Pyšek

#82267

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

#3428

Charles Zuker

#62436

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Charles S. Zuker is a Chilean molecular geneticist and neurobiologist. Zuker is a Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics and a Professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University. He has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1989.

#3429

Patricia Bergquist

#40946

Overall Influence

1933 - 2009 (76 years)

Dame Patricia Rose Bergquist was a New Zealand zoologist who specialised in anatomy and taxonomy. At the time of her death, she was professor emerita of zoology and honorary professor of anatomy with radiology at the University of Auckland.

#3430

Caroline Austin

#58441

Overall Influence

Caroline Ann Austin is a British molecular biologist known for her work on human DNA topoisomerase enzymes. She is a Professor of Molecular Biology at the Institute for Cell and Molecular Biosciences at Newcastle University Medical School.

#3431

Ihsan Ali Al-Shehbaz

#45482

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Ihsan Ali Al-Shehbaz is an American botanist who works as adjunct professor at University of Missouri-St. Louis and Senior Curator at Missouri Botanical Garden. Al-Shehbaz's primary area of interest is Brassicaceae and The Durango Herald called him "a world expert on taxonomy of the family". A 2008 publication of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service called him "the world's authority on species in the genus Lesquerella". The author abbreviation "Al-Shehbaz" is attached to the numerous botanical taxa he has identified.

#3432

Marshall W. Nirenberg

#82298

Overall Influence

#3433

John G. Batsakis

#82302

Overall Influence

#3434

Mark A. O'Neill

Mark A. O'Neill

#39236

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Mark A. O'Neill is an English computational biologist with interests in artificial intelligence, systems biology, complex systems and image analysis. He is the creator and lead programmer on a number of computational projects including the Digital Automated Identification SYstem for automated species identification and PUPS P3, an organic computing environment for Linux.

#3435

Stephen S. Morse

#22327

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Stephen S. Morse is an American epidemiologist, influenza researcher and specialist on emerging infectious diseases, who has served as an adviser on the epidemiology of infectious diseases and on improving disease early warning systems to numerous government and international organizations. As of 2016, he is Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University. His seminal book Emerging Viruses was selected by American Scientist for its list of "100 Top Science Books of the 20th Century".

#3436

Mervyn Bibb

#48560

Overall Influence

Mervyn James Bibb FRS is an Emeritus Fellow at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK. Education Bibb was educated at the University of East Anglia where he graduated with a BSc in Biological Sciences and was awarded a PhD in 1978 for studies of plasmids in Streptomyces coelicolor.

#3437

Ram Rajasekharan

#40251

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Ram Rajasekharan is an Indian plant biologist, food technologist and a former director of the Central Food Technological Research Institute , a constituent laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Known for his studies on plant lipid metabolism, Rajasekharan is a former professor of eminence at the Indian Institute of Science and an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies namely Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India and Indian National Science Academy as well as the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The Departme...

#3438

Lila Gierasch

#70721

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Lila Mary Gierasch is an American biochemist and biophysicist. At present, she is a distinguished Professor working on "protein folding in the cell" in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the College of Natural Sciences, University of Massachusetts—Amherst.

#3439

John D. Biggers

#55567

Overall Influence

1923 - 2018 (95 years)

John Dennis Biggers was a British and American reproductive biologist and reproductive physiologist who helped pioneer in vitro fertilisation. He played a founding role in the scientific study of reproductive physiology, won many scientific awards for developing technology which would become central to human IVF, and engaged in public outreach regarding the ethics of artificial fertilisation.

#3440

Ian Renton Mackay

#82447

Overall Influence

#3441

Oluf Borbye Pedersen

#82472

Overall Influence

#3442

Christian Happi

#58644

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Christian Happi is a Professor of Molecular Biology and Genomics in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Director of the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases, both at Redeemer’s University. He is known for leading the team of scientists that used genomic sequencing to identify a single point of infection from an animal reservoir to a human in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. His research focus is on infectious diseases, including malaria, Lassa fever, Ebola virus disease, HIV, and SARS-CoV-2.

#3443

Alcino J. Silva

Alcino J. Silva

#48403

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Alcino J. Silva is a Portuguese-American neuroscientist who was the recipient of the 2008 Order of Prince Henry and elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2013 for his contributions to the molecular cellular cognition of memory, a field he pioneered with the publication of two articles in Science in 1992.

#3444

William Robert Barker

#81170

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

William Robert Barker is an Honorary Research Associate of the State Herbarium of South Australia. He is a former Chief Botanist of the State Herbarium. With Robyn Mary Barker and Laurence Haegi he had a particular interest in Hakea in the family Proteaceae. He was also involved in taxonomic revisions of Lawrencia, Lasiopetalum and Spyridium.

#3445

Jean-Jacques Cassiman

Jean-Jacques Cassiman

#33210

Overall Influence

1943 - 2022 (79 years)

Jean-Jacques Cassiman was a Belgian geneticist and professor of human genetics. Education and career He graduated in 1967 from the Department of Medical Sciences of the Catholic University of Leuven and then did five years research on human genetics at Stanford University in the United States.

#3446

Mary Lou Clements-Mann

Mary Lou Clements-Mann

#27854

Overall Influence

1946 - 1998 (52 years)

Mary Lou Clements-Mann was the founder and first Director of the Center for Immunization Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is well known for her work in the areas of HIV and influenza vaccine research.

#3447

Eleazar Eskin

#71891

Overall Influence

Eleazar Eskin is a computer scientist and geneticist, professor and Chair of the Department of Computational Medicine, and professor of computer science and human genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on bioinformatics, genomics, and machine learning. A primary research focus is on developing statistical and computational techniques to probe the genetic basis of human disease.

#3448

Charles P. O’brien

#82654

Overall Influence

#3449

Walter Jackson Freeman III

Walter Jackson Freeman III

#19341

Overall Influence

1927 - 2016 (89 years)

Walter Jackson Freeman III , was an American biologist, theoretical neuroscientist and philosopher who conducted research in rabbits' olfactory perception, using EEG. Based on a theoretical framework of neurodynamics that draws upon insights from chaos theory, he speculated that the currency of brains is primarily meaning, and only secondarily information.

#3450

Javier de Felipe

#43647

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Javier de Felipe Oroquieta is a research biologist specializing in the anatomical study of the human brain. Biography De Felipe studied Biology, graduated in 1975 and received his Ph.D. in 1979 from the Complutense University of Madrid. He completed his postdoctoral training from 1980 to 1983 at the Cajal Institute, with research on the cerebral cortex. He continued these investigations in the United States from 1983 at the Washington University School of Medicine, from 1984 to 1985 at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, where he continued between 1989 and 1991 as a Visiting scientist.

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