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,
#3801
Elisabeth Kalko
#57060
Overall Influence
1962 - 2011 (49 years)
Elisabeth Klara Viktoria Kalko was a German tropical scientist and ecologist working at the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Ulm. Life Elisabeth Kalko grew up in the Heilbron area and studied biology up from 1981 at University of Tübingen, Germany and graduated with a diploma. She gained a doctorate in 1991. The topic of her Ph.D. thesis was The ecolocation and hunting behaviour of three European dwarf bat species Pipistrellus pipistrellus , Pipistrellus nathuslii and Pipistrellus kuhli , in the wild. Her doctoral studies were conducted as fellow of the National Merit Foundation .
Go to Profile#3802
Denise Sheer
#57557
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Denise Sheer was appointed professor of human genetics at The Institute of Cell and Molecular Science at Queen Mary, University of London in November 2006. Her fields of expertise include cell and molecular biology; cancer genetics and epigenetics; and molecular pathology of paediatric brain tumours.
Go to Profile#3803
Ezekiel Adebiyi
#54234
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Ezekiel Adebiyi is a Nigerian bioinformatics professor and research scientist. He was appointed president of Nigerian Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. He was also appointed vice-president of African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. In 2010, he was made a professor at Covenant University, becoming the first bioinformatics professor in West Africa.
Go to Profile#3804
M. And Baggiolini
#86848
Overall Influence
#3805
Dennis John Crisp
#86858
Overall Influence
#3806
H. Phillip Koeffler
#86859
Overall Influence
#3807
Markus W. Covert
#43690
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Markus W. Covert is a researcher and professor of bioengineering at Stanford University who led the simulation of the first organism in software. Covert leads an interdisciplinary lab of approximately 10 graduate students and post-doctoral scholars.
Go to Profile#3808
Kevin Hand
#42489
Overall Influence
Kevin Hand is an astrobiologist and planetary scientist at JPL. He is also the founder of Cosmos Education and was its president until 2007. He was working at NASA Ames when he was inspired to form Cosmos Education in 1999 after getting a grant from the Earth and Space Foundation to tour African schools to talk about how education relates to space research.
Go to Profile#3809
Jean Edouard Desmedt
#86909
Overall Influence
#3810
Herbert Walter Levi
#30033
Overall Influence
1921 - 2014 (93 years)
Herbert Walter Levi was professor emeritus of zoology and curator of arachnology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. He was born in Germany, and was educated there and at Leighton Park School, Reading in England. He then received his higher education at the University of Connecticut and the University of Wisconsin. Levi authored about 150 scientific papers on spiders and on biological conservation. He is the author of the popular Golden Guide Spiders and their Kin, with Lorna Rose Levi and Herbert Zim.
Go to Profile#3811
Dwight Billings
#67909
Overall Influence
1910 - 1997 (87 years)
William Dwight Billings was an American ecologist. He was one of the foundational figures in the field of plant physiological ecology and made major contributions to desert and arctic/alpine ecology.
Go to Profile#3812
Jill P. Mesirov
#29442
Overall Influence
Jill P. Mesirov is an American mathematician, computer scientist, and computational biologist who is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. She previously held an adjunct faculty position at Boston University and was the associate director and chief informatics officer at the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Go to Profile#3813
Andrew P. Dobson
#86980
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
#3814
Hendrik Poinar
#55165
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Hendrik Nicholas Poinar is an evolutionary biologist specializing in ancient DNA. Poinar first became known for extracting DNA sequences from ground sloth coprolites. He is currently director of the Ancient DNA Centre at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Go to Profile#3815
Polly Roy
#77159
Overall Influence
Polly Roy OBE is a professor and Chair of Virology at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She attended a number of schools which included Columbia University Medical School, Rutgers University, University of Alabama, and University of Oxford. In 2001 she became a part of The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and, along with being the chair of Virology, is also the co-organiser of the medical microbiology course. The virus that she has dedicated most of her career to is Bluetongue disease that affects sheep and cattle. She became interested in this virus after atte...
Go to Profile#3816
Stephen P. Bell
#82626
Overall Influence
Stephen P. Bell is an American biochemist. Bell earned a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he specializes in researching DNA replication and replisomes. He was named a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator in 2000. In 2009, Bell received the NAS Award in Molecular Biology and was named a member of the National Academy of Sciences itself in 2017. MIT appointed Bell the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor of Biology in 2018. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Genes & Development.
Go to Profile#3817
Leslie Andrew Garay
#71072
Overall Influence
1924 - 2016 (92 years)
Leslie Andrew Garay , born Garay László András, was an American botanist. He was the curator of the Oakes Ames Orchid Herbarium at Harvard University, where he succeeded Charles Schweinfurth in 1958. In 1957 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Go to Profile#3818
H. G. Callan
#69908
Overall Influence
1917 - 1993 (76 years)
Harold Garnet Callan FRS FRSE , known as Mick Callan, was an English zoologist and cytologist. He is especially remembered for his work on Lampbrush chromosomes. Life Callan was born in Maidenhead in Berkshire the son of Garnet George Callan, a naval architect, and Winifred Edith Brazier, a teacher.
Go to Profile#3819
Stephen C. Woods
#87035
Overall Influence
#3820
S. Waters Fox
#87037
Overall Influence
#3821
Karel Voous
#60730
Overall Influence
1920 - 2002 (82 years)
Karel Hendrik Voous was a Dutch ornithologist and author. He was Secretary-General and Honorary President of the International Ornithological Committee. Bibliography Books in English On the history of the distribution of the genus Dendrocopos Birds observed and collected during the whaling expeditions of the "Willem Barendsz" in the Antarctic, 1946–1947 and 1947–1948 Owls of the Northern HemisphereList of Recent Holarctic Bird Species
Go to Profile#3822
Loren Mosher
#7932
Overall Influence
1933 - 2004 (71 years)
Loren Richard Mosher was an American psychiatrist, clinical professor of psychiatry, expert on schizophrenia and the chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia in the National Institute of Mental Health . Mosher spent his professional career advocating for humane and effective treatment for people diagnosed as having schizophrenia and was instrumental in developing an innovative, residential, home-like, non-hospital, non-drug treatment model for newly identified acutely psychotic persons.
Go to Profile#3823
Bruce D. Perry
#17163
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Bruce D. Perry is an American psychiatrist, currently the senior fellow of the Child Trauma Academy in Houston, Texas and an adjunct professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. A clinician and researcher in children's mental health and the neurosciences, from 1993 to 2001 he was the Thomas S. Trammell Research Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine and chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital. He is also the author of several books.
Go to Profile#3824
Rozalyn Anderson
#49039
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Rozalyn Anderson is a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. She studies aging and caloric restriction in primates. Education Anderson received her bachelor's degree from Trinity College, Dublin and her Ph.D. in biochemistry from University College Dublin. In 2000 she moved to Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts for a post-doctoral fellowship with David Sinclair, where she studied caloric restriction and aging in yeast. She began studying mammalian aging during a second post-doctoral fellowship with Richard Weindruch at the University of Wisco...
Go to Profile#3825
Virginia Hinshaw
#54453
Overall Influence
Virginia S. Hinshaw is a scientist with expertise in microbiology, virology and influenza resulting in numerous publications. She served as Vice-Chancellor at U of Wisconsin Madison and Chancellor at University of Hawai'i Manoa campus.
Go to Profile#3826
Cecilia Hidalgo Tapia
#63882
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Maria Cecilia Tapia Hidalgo, known as Cecilia Tapia Hidalgo, is a Chilean biochemist and a member of the faculty at the University of Chile. In 2006 she received Chile's National Prize for Natural Sciences, becoming the first woman to win the award.
Go to Profile#3827
Mihaela Zavolan
#76236
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Mihaela Zavolan is a system biologist and Professor at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. Life Mihaela Zavolan studied medicine at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Timișoara, Romania. She then graduated with a PhD in Computer Science from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, USA. Between 1993 and 2003 Mihaela Zavolan carried out research in the US, at the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, as well as at the Rockefeller University in New York. In 2003, Mihaela Zavolan was appointed Professor of Computational and Systems Biology at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel.
Go to Profile#3828
Alok Bhattacharya
#41913
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Alok Bhattacharya is an Indian parasitologist, academic and a professor at the School of Life Sciences of the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He chairs the Biotechnology Information System Network as well as the Life Sciences Expert Committee of FIST program of the Department of Science and Technology . He is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy and is known for his studies on Entamoeba histolytica and species-specific calcium binding protein and its gene.
Go to Profile#3829
J. Keith Joung
#69715
Overall Influence
J. Keith Joung is an American pathologist and molecular biologist who holds the Robert B. Colvin Endowed Chair in Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and is Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. He is a leading figure in the field of genome editing and has pioneered the development of designer nucleases and sensitive off-target detection methods.
Go to Profile#3830
Didier Trono
#57855
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Didier Trono is a Swiss virologist and a professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . He is known for his research on virus-host interactions and the development of lentiviral vectors for gene therapy.
Go to Profile#3831
Gillian Small
#34006
Overall Influence
Gillian Small is currently the president of World Science U, the higher education arm of World Science Festival. Previously, she was the University Provost & Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Fairleigh Dickinson University from 2016 through 2022.
Go to Profile#3832
Stanford Blade
#82729
Overall Influence
Stanford Blade is a Canadian agronomist and academic administrator. He is the dean of the faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Alberta. Blade is a fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry.
Go to Profile#3833
Dennis Drayna
#43869
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Dennis T. Drayna is an American human geneticist known for his contributions to stuttering, human haemochromatosis, pitch, and taste. He is currently the Section Chief of Genetics of Communication Disorders at the U.S. National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
Go to Profile#3834
Hendrik de Wit
#46521
Overall Influence
1909 - 1999 (90 years)
Hendrik Cornelis Dirk de Wit was a Dutch systematic botanist who contributed significantly to the knowledge of the Aroid genera Cryptocoryne and Lagenandra. He grew up in the Waterland, a marshy area in the Northwest Netherlands, and had a lifelong interest in aquatic plants.
Go to Profile#3835
Frank Plummer
#49871
Overall Influence
1952 - 2020 (68 years)
Francis Allan Plummer was a Canadian scientist, academic and HIV/AIDS researcher. He was "a recognized specialist in infectious diseases whose work influenced public health policy in Canada and abroad". He was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Medical Microbiology at the University of Manitoba and Scientific Director General, National Microbiology Laboratory.
Go to Profile#3836
Robert Kralovics
#70524
Overall Influence
Robert Kralovics is a Slovak born geneticist, working in the area of blood neoplasms. Robert Kralovics was born in 1970 in Nové Zámky, Slovakia, which was at that time part of Czechoslovakia. Robert Kralovics earned his master's degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Comenius University in Bratislava and later his PhD in Biophysics at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Brno. He completed his post-doctoral work on the genetics of myeloproliferative disorders working with Josef Prchal at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, US. In 2000, he joined Joe Prchal’s group as assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Go to Profile#3837
Colin Murray Parkes
#29648
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Colin Murray Parkes is a British psychiatrist and the author of numerous books and publications on grief. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to bereaved people in June 1996.
Go to Profile#3838
Shu Chien
#15802
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Shu Chien is a Chinese–American physiologist and bioengineer. His work on the fluid dynamics of blood flow has had a major impact on the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis. More recently, Chien's research has focused on the mechanical forces, such as pressure and flow, that regulate the behaviors of the cells in blood vessels. Chien is currently President of the Biomedical Engineering Society.
Go to Profile#3839
Frank Uhlmann
#83859
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Frank Uhlmann FRS is a group leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London. Education Uhlmann was educated at the University of Tübingen where he was awarded a PhD in 1997. During his PhD, he worked with Jerard Hurwitz at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
Go to Profile#3840
David Molyneux
#52054
Overall Influence
David Hurst Molyneux CMG is a British parasitologist who served as the Director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine , where, as of 2018, he is an emeritus professor. He previously held the Chair of Biological Sciences at the University of Salford , where he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Science. His research and advocacy have focused on what are now known as neglected tropical diseases, and Michael Barrett credits him as among the earliest advocates of the campaign to focus international attention on this group of diseases in the early-to-mid 2000s.
Go to Profile#3841
Stephen Chanock
#79357
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Stephen Jacob Chanock is an American physician and geneticist. He currently serves as Director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the U.S. National Cancer Institute . Biography Stephen Chanock is the son of NIH scientist Robert M. Chanock, discoverer of human respiratory syncytial virus.
Go to Profile#3842
Panayotis Katsoyannis
#40231
Overall Influence
1924 - 2019 (95 years)
Panayotis G. Katsoyannis was an American biochemist who is often credited with being the first to synthesize insulin while leading a team at the University of Pittsburgh in the early 1960s. His results synthesizing insulin were achieved almost simultaneously with that of Helmut Zahn at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. In his early years, while doing his PhD at the University of Athens Katsoyannis had been under the mentorship of Leonidas Zervas, who previously developed new synthetic methods for asymmetric cysteine-containing peptides as those in insulin.
Go to Profile#3843
Susan M. Gasser
#82122
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Susan M. Gasser is a Swiss molecular biologist. From 2004 to 2019 she was the director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, where she also led a research group from 2004 until 2021. She was in parallel professor of molecular biology at the University of Basel until April 2021. Since January 2021, Susan Gasser is director of the ISREC Foundation, which supports translational cancer research. She is also professor invité at the University of Lausanne in the department of fundamental microbiology. She is an expert in quantitative biology and studies epigenetic inheritance and genome stability.
Go to Profile#3844
Adrienne Clarke
#55223
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Adrienne Elizabeth Clarke is Professor Emeritus of Botany at the University of Melbourne, where she ran the Plant Cell Biology Research Centre from 1982–1999. She is a former chairman of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation , former Lieutenant Governor of Victoria and former Chancellor of La Trobe University .
Go to Profile#3845
Jacobus Boomsma
#33116
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Jacobus Jan "Koos" Boomsma is a Dutch evolutionary biologist who studies social evolution and the evolution of mating systems. Education Boomsma obtained an MSc and PhD degree in biology in 1976 and 1982 at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#3846
David Kissane
#49387
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Professor David William Kissane, AC is an Australian psychiatrist specialising in psychiatric oncology and palliative care. Since 2018, he has been the inaugural Chair in Palliative Medicine Research at the University of Notre Dame Australia. He has also held professorships at the University of Melbourne , Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City , and Monash University . In 2008, he received the Arthur M. Sutherland Award of the International Psycho-Oncology Society . On 26 January 2018 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia. Professor Kissane has been describe...
Go to Profile#3847
Christine Seidman
#65676
Overall Influence
Christine Edry Seidman is the Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She operates a joint lab with her husband, Jonathan Seidman, where they study genetic mechanisms of heart disease. In recognition of her scientific contributions, she was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and National Academy of Medicine.
Go to Profile#3848
Hagan Bayley
#51550
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
John Hagan Pryce Bayley FRS, FLSW is a British scientist, who holds the position of Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of Oxford. Life and education Bayley was educated at The King's School, Chester,,Uppingham School, Balliol College, Oxford and Harvard University, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in 1979.
Go to Profile#3849
Ivano Bertini
#87481
Overall Influence
#3850
Clive Ballard
#82633
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Clive Ballard is a British, world-leading expert in dementia. He is currently Professor of Age-Related Diseases at the University of Exeter and Interim Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the University of Exeter Medical School.
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