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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School

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List of the most influential people in Biology,

#3651

Stephen Schwartz

#79583

Overall Influence

1942 - 2020 (78 years)

Stephen M. Schwartz was an American pathologist at the University of Washington. He researched vascular biology, investigating the structure of blood vessels and smooth muscle cells. He died from complications brought on by COVID-19 during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Seattle.

#3652

Scott Strobel

#58912

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Scott A. Strobel is the provost of Yale University as well as a professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry. He was the vice provost for Science Initiatives and vice president for West Campus Planning & Program Development. An educator and researcher, he has led a number of Yale initiatives over the past two decades. Strobel was appointed as Yale's provost in 2020.

#3653

Celso Arango

#39414

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Celso Arango is a psychiatrist who has worked as a clinician, researcher, and educator in psychiatry and mental health, notably in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry, psychosis, and mental health promotion.

#3654

Wing Hung Wong

#36693

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Wing Hung Wong is a Chinese-American statistician, computational biologist, and Stanford University professor. Biography Wong graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1976 with a bachelor's degree. At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he studied under renowned statistician Grace Wahba, and was awarded a PhD in Statistics in 1980. After graduation, he taught at the University of Chicago, served as an assistant professor, associate professor, and professor. In 1994 he joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong Department of Statistics. Since 1997, he taught and led his lab at the University of California, Los Angeles and Harvard University.

#3655

Azra Raza

#21431

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Azra Raza is the Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine and Director of Myelodysplastic Syndrome Center at Columbia University. She has previously held positions at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Cincinnati, Rush University, and the University of Massachusetts. Raza's research focuses on myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia.

#3656

Frank Grosveld

#25164

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Franklin Gerardus "Frank" Grosveld, FRS is a Dutch molecular biologist whose research interests are in the regulation of transcription during development with a particular emphasis on mammalian erythroid differentiation. He is a professor and former Head of the Department of Cell Biology at the Erasmus MC, Rotterdam.

#3657

Ingrid Johnsrude

#35942

Overall Influence

Ingrid Suzanne Johnsrude is a Canadian neuroscientist, a professor of psychology at University of Western Ontario, and was the holder of the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience. Her research involves brain imaging, the connections between brain structure and language ability, and the diagnosis of degenerative brain diseases in the elderly.

#3658

Herwig Baier

#81475

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Herwig Baier is a German neurobiologist with dual German and US-American citizenship. He is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence and head of the department Genes – Circuits – Behavior. Herwig Baier's research aims to understand how animal brains convert sensory inputs into behavioral responses.

#3659

Reinhardt Kristensen

#69519

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Reinhardt Møbjerg Kristensen is a Danish invertebrate biologist, noted for the discovery of three new phyla of microscopic animals: the Loricifera in 1983, the Cycliophora in 1995, and the Micrognathozoa in 2000. He is also considered one of the world's leading experts on tardigrades. His recent field of work revolves mostly around arctic biology.

#3660

Peter Hadland Davis

#61663

Overall Influence

1918 - 1992 (74 years)

Peter Hadland Davis FLS, FRSE was a British botanist. Life Davis was born on 18 June 1918 in Weston-super-Mare. Initially he was educated at the Nash House, Burnham-on-Sea and then continued his education at Bradfield College and later in Maiden Erlegh near Reading, Berkshire . In 1937 he began training at Ingwersen's Alpine Plant Nursery in East Grinstead and became interested in botany.

#3661

Eric Courchesne

#60869

Overall Influence

Eric Courchesne is an autism researcher and Professor of Neurosciences in University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Director of the UCSD Autism Center located in La Jolla, California.

#3662

Raymond Hoser

#44576

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Raymond Terrence Hoser is an Australian snake-catcher and author. Since 1976, he has written books and articles about official corruption in Australia. He has also written works on Australian frogs and reptiles. Hoser's work on herpetology is controversial, including his advocacy of the surgical alteration of captive snakes to remove their venom glands and his self-published herpetological taxonomy, which has been described as "taxonomic vandalism".

#3663

Gina G. Turrigiano

#45355

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Gina G. Turrigiano is an American neuroscientist, and is the Levitan Chair of Vision Science at Brandeis University. Turrigiano is known for her pioneering work on the mechanisms that allow brain circuits to remain both flexible and stable. Turrigiano and colleagues discovered several forms of "homeostatic" plasticity, most notably Synaptic scaling and intrinsic homeostatic plasticity, and have characterized how these forms of plasticity contributes to learning and experience-dependent plastic changes in the brain.

#3664

Callum Roberts

#40113

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Callum Michael Roberts is a British marine conservation biologist, oceanographer, science communicator, author and research scholar at the University of Exeter. He was formerly at the University of York. He is best known for his research and advocacy related to marine reserves and the environmental impact of fishing.

#3665

Diether Lambrechts

#80206

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Diether Lambrechts is a Belgian geneticist and professor at the KU Leuven and VIB. He is the director of the Vesalius Research Center. Lambrechts is known for his multidisciplinary approach to dissecting tumor biology. Major scientific contributions include identifying oxygen supply regulation as an anti-cancer treatment strategy.

#3666

Roxie Collie Laybourne

Roxie Collie Laybourne

#38538

Overall Influence

1910 - 2003 (93 years)

Roxie Collie Simpson Laybourne was an American ornithologist born in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She pioneered the study of forensic ornithology while at the National Museum of Natural History; these forensic techniques for identifying species of birds involved in bird strikes led to aircraft safety improvements.

#3667

Athel Cornish-Bowden

Athel Cornish-Bowden

#70663

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Athel Cornish-Bowden is a British biochemist known for his numerous textbooks, particularly those on enzyme kinetics and his work on metabolic control analysis. Education and career Athel Cornish-Bowden worked on pepsin catalysis. This began a life long pursuit of work on enzyme catalysis and in later years work on the control of metabolism. More recently he has also turned his attention to work related to the origin and nature of life.

#3668

Sheldon C. Reed

#54221

Overall Influence

1910 - 2003 (93 years)

Sheldon Clark Reed was an American biologist and geneticist who coined the term genetic counseling and advocated for the wider use of genetic counseling as a means to educate the public. Education Reed was born in Vermont on November 7, 1910. He acquired a bachelor's degree in biology from Dartmouth College where he worked under George Davis Snell researching harelip in mice. He published a paper on this subject in his junior year. He later attended Harvard University for graduate school where he performed research under William Castle, studying mutations in mammals including harelip. He publ...

#3669

Haifan Lin

#40084

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Haifan Lin is a Chinese-born American stem cell biologist. He is the Eugene Higgins Chair Professor of Cell Biology at Yale University and the founding Director of the Yale Stem Cell Center. He previously founded and directed the Stem Cell Research Program at Duke University. Recognized for his significant contributions to stem cell research, he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.

#3670

Farley Mowat

#8709

Overall Influence

1921 - 2014 (93 years)

Farley McGill Mowat, was a Canadian writer and environmentalist. His works were translated into 52 languages, and he sold more than 17 million books. He achieved fame with the publication of his books on the Canadian north, such as People of the Deer and Never Cry Wolf . The latter, an account of his experiences with wolves in the Arctic, was made into a film of the same name released in 1983. For his body of work as a writer he won the annual Vicky Metcalf Award for Children's Literature in 1970.

#3671

Subhash Chandra Lakhotia

Subhash Chandra Lakhotia

#58897

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

2018 INSA Aryabhata Medal2022 Asiatic Society, Kolkata Joy Gobind Law Memorial Medal Subhash Chandra Lakhotia is an Indian cytogeneticist, academic, Distinguished Professor of Zoology, and Science & Engineering Research Board Distinguished Fellow at Banaras Hindu University. He is known for his pioneering researches on Drosophila with regard to its chromosome organization and replication. A Raja Ramanna fellow of the Department of Science and Technology and the Department of Atomic Energy, he is an elected fellow of all three major Indian science academies: Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Sciences, India.

#3672

Giles Oldroyd

#72169

Overall Influence

Giles Edward Dixon Oldroyd is a professor at the University of Cambridge, working on beneficial Legume symbioses in Medicago truncatula. He has been a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award winner and the Society of Biology President's Medal winner. From 2014 Giles has been in the top 1% of highly cited plant scientists across the world.

#3673

Gabriel Dover

#59072

Overall Influence

Gabriel A. Dover was a British geneticist, best known for coining the term molecular drive in 1982 to describe a putative third evolutionary force operating distinctly from natural selection and genetic drift.

#3674

Juan A. Rivero

#46632

Overall Influence

1923 - 2014 (91 years)

Dr. Juan Arturo Rivero Quintero was a Puerto Rican biologist who founded the Dr. Juan A. Rivero Zoo at the University of Puerto Rico's Mayagüez Campus. Education Dr. Rivero obtained a Bachelor of Science in Agronomy from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez in 1945. In 1942, he joined the Beta-Activo chapter of Phi Sigma Alpha fraternity. In 1951, he obtained an M.S. from Harvard University, followed by a Ph.D. from that same institution in 1953.

#3675

Adrian Owen

#33924

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Adrian Mark Owen is a British neuroscientist and best-selling author. He is best known for his 2006 discovery, published in the journal Science, showing that some patients thought to be in a persistent vegetative state are in fact fully aware and able to communicate with the outside world using functional magnetic resonance imaging . In the 2019 New Year Honours List, Owen was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for services to scientific research.

#3676

Grace Oladunni Taylor

#27670

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Grace Oladunni Taylor is a biochemist, formerly at University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She was the second woman to be inducted into the Nigerian Academy of Science and the first African awarded a L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.

#3677

Edwin T. Mertz

#35520

Overall Influence

1909 - 1999 (90 years)

Edwin Theodore Mertz was an American chemist and biochemist. Mertz was noted for co-discovery of high-lysine corn which significantly increased protein levels in corn and beans. Life and career 1909 born in Missoula, Montana1931 B.A with a double major in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Montana1933 M.S. from the University of Illinois, Urbana1935 Ph.D. from the University of Illinois1935-1937 a research biochemist at Armour and Company in Chicago1937-1938 an instructor in biochemistry at the University of Illinois1937 married Mary Ellen Ruskamp1938-1940 a research associate...

#3678

Meredith Leam Jones

#81334

Overall Influence

1926 - 1996 (70 years)

Meredith Leam Jones was an American zoologist. Biography Jones was born in 1926. He received a bachelor's degree in invertebrate zoology in 1948. In 1952, he received a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Starting from 1957 to 1960, he was an assistant professor at the Florida State University. He was an assisting curator from 1960 to 1964, at the Department of Living Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History. He accepted a position as an associate curator in 1964, in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology of the National Museum of Natural History. By 1970, he advanced to curator position in the Division of Worms in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology.

#3679

Misha Tsodyks

#24782

Overall Influence

Misha Tsodyks is a leading theoretical and computational neuroscientist whose research focuses on identifying neural algorithms underlying cortical systems and cognitive behavior. His most notable achievements include demonstrating the importance of sparsity in neural networks, describing the mechanisms of short-term synaptic plasticity and working and associative memory.

#3680

Helen Christensen

#65524

Overall Influence

Scientia Professor Helen Christensen is Scientia Professor of Mental Health at UNSW Sydney and Board Director of Black Dog Institute . She is the former Executive Director and Chief Scientist at Black Dog Institute, having led the organisation from 2011 to 2021.

#3681

Mary Jane Osborn

#59505

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

Mary Jane Osborn was an American biochemist and microbiologist known for her research on the biosynthesis of lipopolysaccharide , a key component of the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, and discovering the mechanism of action of the anti-cancer drug methotrexate. She headed the Department of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the University of Connecticut Health Center and served as president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

#3682

Jack Greenblatt

#58502

Overall Influence

Jack Greenblatt is the Ann and Max Tannenbaum Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. He has been a recipient of a Medical Research Council of Canada Distinguished Scientist Award, and an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is the recipient of the 2011 Tony Pawson Proteomics Award from the Canadian National Proteomics Network.

#3683

Vern L. Schramm

Vern L. Schramm

#42678

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Vern L. Schramm is a professor and Ruth Merns Chair in Biochemistry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Schramm was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007. His laboratory's research focuses on the elucidation of enzymatic mechanisms and transition state structure.

#3684

David T. Jones

#76320

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

David Tudor Jones is a Professor of Bioinformatics, and Head of Bioinformatics Group in the University College London. He is also the director in Bloomsbury Center for Bioinformatics, which is a joint Research Centre between UCL and Birkbeck, University of London and which also provides bioinformatics training and support services to biomedical researchers. In 2013, he is a member of editorial boards for PLoS ONE, BioData Mining, Advanced Bioinformatics, Chemical Biology & Drug Design, and Protein: Structure, Function and Bioinformatics.

#3685

Lenore Fahrig

#51926

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Lenore Fahrig is a Chancellor's Professor in the biology department at Carleton University, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Fahrig studies effects of landscape structure—the arrangement of forests, wetlands, roads, cities, and farmland—on wildlife populations and biodiversity, and is best known for her work on habitat fragmentation. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

#3686

Zhuo-Hua Pan

#53309

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Zhuo-Hua Pan is a Chinese-American neuroscientist, known for his foundational contributions to optogenetics. He is the Edward T. and Ellen K. Dryer Endowed Professor of Ophthalmology at Wayne State University, and Scientific Director of the Ligon Research Center of Vision at the university's Kresge Eye Institute.

#3687

Lars Klareskog

#72335

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Lars Klareskog is a Swedish physician, immunologist, and rheumatologist, known for research into the genetics of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis . Klareskog received his medical degree from the University of Uppsala in 1974 and received his doctorate in 1978 with thesis On the structure, function and tissue distribution of HLA-DR and Ia antigens. From 1990 to 1993, he held the chair of clinical immunology at Uppsala University. He then held the chair of rheumatology at the Karolinska Institute and the Karolinska Clinic until 2012 and was head of the Rheumatology Clinic and Research Group.

#3688

Kathleen Matthews

#64954

Overall Influence

Kathleen Matthews is an American biochemist specializing in DNA/protein interactions, specifically related to the lac repressor. She is the Stewart Memorial Professor Emerita of BioSciences at Rice University.

#3689

Robert K. Selander

#73991

Overall Influence

1927 - 2015 (88 years)

Robert Keith Selander was an American evolutionary biologist and emeritus professor at Pennsylvania State University. Known for his studies of molecular genetics, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1982.

#3690

Dale Clayton

#72692

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Dale Hartwell Clayton , a parasitologist and professor of evolution at the University of Utah. Clayton is the taxonomist of Strigiphilus garylarsoni. Information Dale Clayton named the new species of feather louse after his favorite cartoonist, Gary Larson. Clayton has been interested in the relationships between parasites and their hosts since he was in high school. He was so intrigued with these relationships that he was able to use the research that he gathered in a high school science fair project in his Ph.D. thesis. The information was on the impact of parasites on avian conditions. He i...

#3691

Christian Bréchot

#58770

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Christian Bréchot is a French physician and scientist who has been serving as president of the Global Virus Network since 2017. He previously served as president of the Institut Pasteur from 2013 until 2017 and as chief executive officer of the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research from 2001 to 2007.

#3692

Bruce McNaughton

#63958

Overall Influence

Peter Bruce L. McNaughton is a Canadian neuroscientist and Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine , as well as a Professor of Neuroscience and director of the Polaris Brain Dynamics research group at The Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience. He joined the faculty of UC Irvine in 2014, after having taught at the University of Lethbridge for six years. He had moved his lab from the University of Arizona to the University of Lethbridge in 2008 after winning the Polaris Award from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2016.

#3693

Robert D. Acland

Robert D. Acland

#48472

Overall Influence

1941 - 2015 (74 years)

Robert D. Acland, MBBS, FRCS was a surgeon and academic credited with being one of the pioneers in plastic and reconstructive microsurgery. He was the younger son of Richard Acland and his wife Anne. He developed one of the first microsurgical instruments, the Acland micro-vessel clamp, as well as the 10-0 nylon sutures and needles that are still used today. He published the first edition of Acland's Practice Manual for Micro-vascular Surgery, also known as the "Red Book", a manual on microsurgical techniques . The current edition was revised in 2008 and is still an essential tool for any tr...

#3694

Rebecca J. Nelson

#43352

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Rebecca J. Nelson is an American biologist and a professor at Cornell University and a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Her work focuses on natural genetic diversity for disease resistance in maize. Biography Nelson's parents were researchers at the National Institutes of Health. Rebecca holds a BA degree from Swarthmore College, 1982 and a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Washington, 1988. She is married to public radio journalist Jonathan Miller and has two children, William and Benjamin.

#3695

Mya Breitbart

#71577

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Mya Breitbart is an American biologist and professor of biological oceanography at the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science. She is best known for her contributions to the field of viral metagenomics. Popular Science recognized her because of her approach of not trying to sequence individual viruses or organisms but to sequence everything in a given ecosystem.

#3696

Jean‐charles Fruchart

#85654

Overall Influence

#3697

Jean Lindenmann

#21994

Overall Influence

1924 - 2015 (91 years)

Jean Lindenmann was a Swiss virologist and immunologist. Lindenmann, together with his colleague, the British virologist Alick Isaacs, co-discovered and identified interferon in 1957 through their research at the National Institute for Medical Research. Interferon, a group of proteins involved in immune regulation and defence against viruses, is now used to treat a variety of conditions, including hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis, and some cancers.

#3698

Edward C. Dickinson

#56821

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Edward Clive Dickinson is a British ornithologist specialising in the taxonomy of southeast Asian birds. Biography Edward Dickinson was born in 1938, in Paget Parish, Bermuda, the son of Lionel Gilbert Dickinson and Eileen Dickinson née Barlow. He was educated at Westminster School. After leaving school he worked from 1962 as a product manager for Pronesiam Inc. in Bangkok. In 1965 he married Dorothy Sopper, with whom he has two children. From 1968 to 1970, he was the editor of the National Historical Bulletin of the Siam Society. In 1971, Dickinson moved to Nestlé, where he worked until 1973 as a project manager.

#3699

Kumaravel Somasundaram

#40624

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Kumaravel Somasundaram is an Indian cancer biologist and a professor at the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology of the Indian Institute of Science. Known for his studies on the therapeutics of Glioblastoma, Somasunderam is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies namely, the National Academy of Sciences, India, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contri...

#3700

Harold Hill Smith

#65727

Overall Influence

1910 - 1994 (84 years)

Harold Hill Smith was an American geneticist who first fused a human cell and a plant cell. Life and career Born in Kearny, New Jersey, Smith graduated from Rutgers University and earned master's and doctoral degrees in genetics at Harvard University. He then worked for seven years at the United States Department of Agriculture before serving in the United States Navy in World War II.

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