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,
#4101
Fredrik Ronquist
#90313
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
#4102
James Allen Keast
#73452
Overall Influence
1922 - 2009 (87 years)
James Allen Keast was an Australian ornithologist, and Professor of Biology at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Born in Turramurra, New South Wales, he performed war service 1941–1945 in New Guinea and New Britain. He earned his BSc and MSc degrees at the University of Sydney, going on to earn an MA and PhD from Harvard. He started the first natural history series on Australian television in 1958–1960. A long-time member and benefactor of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union , he was elected a Fellow of the RAOU in 1960. Keast joined the faculty of Queen's in 1962, and in 1989 became a professor emeritus.
Go to Profile#4103
John A. Tainer
#90329
Overall Influence
#4104
Matthias C. Rillig
#90338
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
#4105
Arthur M. Silverstein
#66167
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Arthur M. Silverstein is an American immunologist and science historian who has written extensively on the history of immunology. He is Professor Emeritus of Ophthalmic Immunology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he spent 25 years on the faculty in the Department of Ophthalmology and was also affiliated with its Institute of the History of Medicine.
Go to Profile#4106
Barbara Pickersgill
#86489
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Barbara Pickersgill is a British botanist with a special interest in the domestication of crops, the genetics, taxonomy, and evolutionary biology of cultivated plants, and the preservation of crop diversity. Her 1966 dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Indiana University concerned the taxonomy of Capsicum chinense. Her doctoral advisor was Charles B. Heiser.
Go to Profile#4107
Andreas J. Bäumler
#87237
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Andreas J. Bäumler is a professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, in Davis, California. Bäumler studies the molecular mechanisms of Salmonella interaction with the intestinal mucosa. He is one of the leading researchers in the field of Salmonella research and has several highly cited publications on the topic of Salmonella infection, immunity to Salmonella, and the interactions between the host, the pathogen, and the intestinal microbiota during infection. Bäumler has a B.S. and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from University of Tübingen, Germany.
Go to Profile#4108
Peter Francis Buckley
#90410
Overall Influence
#4109
James Olen Armitage
#90418
Overall Influence
#4110
Michael Ferguson
#87113
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Sir Michael Anthony John Ferguson CBE, FRS, FRSE is a British biochemist and Regius Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee. His research team are based at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee.
Go to Profile#4111
Karl August Folkers
#27367
Overall Influence
1906 - 1997 (91 years)
Karl August Folkers was an American biochemist who made major contributions to the isolation and identification of bioactive natural products. Career Folkers graduated from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois in 1928. In 1986, the institution awarded him its Alumni Achievement Award.
Go to Profile#4112
John Waterlow
#28866
Overall Influence
1916 - 2010 (94 years)
John Conrad Waterlow was a British physiologist who specialised in childhood malnutrition. Waterlow was born into a well known London printing family. Whilst growing up, the family home was often visited by the likes of EM Forster and Virginia Woolf.
Go to Profile#4113
Winston Ponder
#50109
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Winston Frank Ponder is a malacologist born and educated in New Zealand who has named and described many marine and freshwater animals, especially micromolluscs. Education and career Ponder graduated with an MSc, PhD and DSc from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He completed his Ph.D while working at the Dominion Museum but by 1969 he had taken a position at the Australian Museum, where he has remained.
Go to Profile#4114
André R. Capron
#90462
Overall Influence
#4115
Laurent Keller
#88186
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Laurent Keller is a Swiss evolutionary biologist, myrmecologist and author. He was a professor at the University of Lausanne from 1996 to 2023. In March 2023, the journal Science reported that sexual harassment allegations were leveled against Keller. According to the Science article, the University of Lausanne sent an email to staff in February of 2023 to inform them that Laurent Keller no longer works there.
Go to Profile#4116
Gloria M. Coruzzi
#55234
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Gloria M. Coruzzi is an American molecular biologist specializing in plant systems biology and evolutionary genomics. Education and career As Carroll & Milton Petrie Professor of Biology at New York University’s Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, Coruzzi studies gene regulatory networks controlling nitrogen use efficiency and root nutrient foraging in the model plant Arabidopsis. She also examines phylogenomic approaches across higher plant species to identify genes associated with the evolution of key plant traits such as seeds. This research resides in Pasteur's quadrant as a scienti...
Go to Profile#4117
Jan Holmgren
#72968
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Jan Roland Holmgren is a Swedish physician, microbiologist, immunologist, and vaccinologist, known for his research on cholera and mucosal immunology, specifically, for his leadership in developing "the world's first effective oral cholera vaccine".
Go to Profile#4118
David W. Golde
#90523
Overall Influence
#4119
Graham C. Walker
#86297
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Graham Charles Walker is an American biologist, notable for his work explicating the structure and function of proteins involved in DNA repair and mutagenesis, with applications for cancer, and for understanding rhizobium functions that infect plants and mammals.
Go to Profile#4120
Michael Fischbach
#62171
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Michael Andrew Fischbach is an American chemist, microbiologist, and geneticist. He is an associate professor of Bioengineering and ChEM-H Faculty Fellow at Stanford University and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator.
Go to Profile#4121
Michael Francis O'rourke
#90603
Overall Influence
#4122
Linda Liau
#42175
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Linda M. Liau is an American neurosurgeon, neuroscientist, and the W. Eugene Stern Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Liau was elected to the Society of Neurological Surgeons in 2013 and the National Academy of Medicine in 2018. She has published over 230 research articles and a textbook, Brain Tumor Immunotherapy. She served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neuro-Oncology from 2007 to 2017.
Go to Profile#4123
Karen Ashe
#46585
Overall Influence
Karen K. Hsiao Ashe is a professor at the Department of Neurology and Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota Medical School, where she holds the Edmund Wallace and Anne Marie Tulloch Chairs in Neurology and Neuroscience. She is the founding director of the N. Bud Grossman Center for Memory Research and Care, and her specific research interest is memory loss resulting from Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Her research has included the development of an animal model of Alzheimer's.
Go to Profile#4124
Catherine M. Green
#54571
Overall Influence
Catherine Mary Green is an English biologist who is an Associate Professor in Chromosome Dynamics at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford. Her research considers chromosome stability during the replication of DNA. During the COVID-19 pandemic Green was part of the Oxford team who developed the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
Go to Profile#4125
V'incent Marks
#90659
Overall Influence
#4126
W. Ian Lipkin
#40554
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Walter Ian Lipkin is the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and a professor of Neurology and Pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He is also director of the Center for Infection and Immunity, an academic laboratory for microbe hunting in acute and chronic diseases. Lipkin is internationally recognized for his work with West Nile virus, SARS and COVID-19.
Go to Profile#4127
Frederick Stratten Russell
#90678
Overall Influence
#4128
Hollis Cline
#53675
Overall Influence
Hollis T. Cline is an American neuroscientist and the Director of the Dorris Neuroscience Center at the Scripps Research Institute in California. Her research focuses on the impact of sensory experience on brain development and plasticity.
Go to Profile#4129
Bryan Kolb
#33291
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Bryan Edward Kolb is a Canadian neuroscientist, neuropsychologist, researcher, author and educator. Kolb's research focuses on the organization and functions of the cerebral cortex. In 1976, Kolb's PhD thesis established the utility of employing rats for study of the prefrontal cortex in medical research. opening up a new venue for non-primate animal research in the prefrontal cortex and accelerating the development of new treatments that help victims of disease and cerebral injury. He was the first to demonstrate how the regrowth of brain cells accompanies restoration of brain function and...
Go to Profile#4130
Ian Stirling
#66353
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Ian Grote Stirling is a research scientist emeritus with Environment and Climate Change Canada and an adjunct professor in the University of Alberta Department of Biological Sciences. His research has focused mostly on Arctic and Antarctic zoology and ecology, and he is one of the world's top authorities on polar bears. Stirling has written five books and more than 150 articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. He has written and spoken extensively about the danger posed to polar bears by global warming.
Go to Profile#4131
Tim Caro
#51822
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Timothy M. Caro is a British evolutionary ecologist known for his work on conservation biology, animal behaviour, anti-predator defences in animals, and the function of zebra stripes. He is the author of several textbooks on these subjects.
Go to Profile#4132
Sabine Werner
#84876
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Sabine Werner is a German biochemist and professor. Biography Sabine Werner was born on 5 September 1960 in Tübingen, Germany. She attended Universities of Tubingen and Munich where she studied Biochemistry. Her PhD was in cancer research at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, completed in 1989. Werner then went to the University of California San Francisco working on growth factor action and tissue repair. Werner took a position as group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute from 1993 to 1999 while also working as an Associate Professor in the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich.In 1999 Werner became the Professor of Cell Biology at ETH Zürich.
Go to Profile#4133
Hiroyoshi Ohashi
#89786
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Hiroyoshi Ohashi is a botanist formerly at the University of Tokyo and Tohoku University. He began publishing on Japanese Arisaema in the early 1960s. He published a couple of miscellaneous notes on Arisaema in 1963 and 1964 and these were followed by a revision of the genus for Japan jointly published in 1980 with J. Murata, and by the Araceae treatment for the Wildflowers of Japan .
Go to Profile#4134
Gareth Evans
#80567
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Professor D. Gareth R. Evans FLSW is a British medical geneticist. Evans trained at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, specialising in paediatrics in the Army. He then switched to genetics at Saint Mary's Hospital, Manchester.
Go to Profile#4135
Lian Pin Koh
#79470
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
Lian Pin Koh is a Singaporean conservation scientist. He is the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor of Conservation, Vice Dean of Research at the Faculty of Science, Director of the Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions, and Director of the Tropical Marine Science Institute at the National University of Singapore .
Go to Profile#4136
David G. Bostwick
#90807
Overall Influence
#4137
Stephen Friend
#66943
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Stephen H. Friend is co-founder and director of Sage Bionetworks. Formerly Senior Vice-president at Merck & Co. Friend co-founded Rosetta Inpharmatics with Leland H. Hartwell and Leroy Hood in 1996. Much of his research has focused on cancer.
Go to Profile#4138
Ron Penny
#54696
Overall Influence
1936 - 2019 (83 years)
Ronald Penny, was an Australian immunologist who made the first diagnosis of HIV/AIDS in Australia in 1982. Early life Penny was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1936, and in 1938 his Jewish family settled in Australia as religious refugees.
Go to Profile#4139
Aude Oliva
#21785
Overall Influence
Aude Oliva is a French professor of computer vision, neuroscience, and human-computer interaction at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . Education Oliva has a dual French baccalaureate in mathematics and physics. She then earned a Masters of Science in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience from the Institut National Polytechnique in Grenoble and then a doctorate from the same university in 1995. She joined the MIT faculty in 2004 and CSAIL in 2012.
Go to Profile#4140
John Butler Mulliken
#90848
Overall Influence
#4141
Perry Webster Gilbert
#84078
Overall Influence
1912 - 2000 (88 years)
Perry Webster Gilbert was a professor at Cornell University, shark scientist, and former Director of Mote Marine Laboratory. He pioneered the capture and study of live sharks and for several decades was considered one of the world's foremost experts on shark anatomy and behavior. Over the course of his life, Gilbert published two books and approximately 150 scientific papers. As a recipient of both Carnegie and Guggenheim Fellowships and chair of the American Institute of Biological Sciences' Shark Research Panel, Gilbert travelled the world to better learn and understand shark behavior.
Go to Profile#4142
Graham Dockray
#81090
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Graham John Dockray FMedSci, FRS is a British physiologist, and Professor of Physiology at University of Liverpool. Life He earned a B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Zoology, from University of Nottingham in 1971.
Go to Profile#4143
Charles J. Lumsden
#43331
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Charles J. Lumsden is a Canadian biologist in the Department of Medicine and Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto. He has been an early proponent of sociobiology, looking to our genetic nature to supplement culture in describing what makes us human. He wrote two influential books in collaboration with Edward O. Wilson Genes, Mind and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process. and Promethean Fire: Reflections on the Origin of Mind . Part of his interests lies in the mathematical and philosophical bases of physical theory in biology, and the origins of creativity. He has also co-edit...
Go to Profile#4144
Raymond St. Leger
#72528
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Raymond J. St. Leger is an American mycologist, entomologist, molecular biologist and biotechnologist who currently holds the rank of Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Entomology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Go to Profile#4145
Emma Whitelaw
#83465
Overall Influence
Emma Whitelaw is an eminent molecular biologist and NHMRC Australia Fellow at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and is among Australia's leading researchers of epigenetics. Whitelaw was the first to demonstrate epigenetic inheritance in mammals. She now currently works at La Trobe University in Australia.
Go to Profile#4146
Anjana Rao
#87342
Overall Influence
Anjana Rao is a cellular and molecular biologist of Indian ethnicity, working in the US. She uses immune cells as well as other types of cells to understand intracellular signaling and gene expression. Her research focuses on how signaling pathways control gene expression.
Go to Profile#4147
Emilio Perucca
#90893
Overall Influence
#4148
Billie Lee Turner
#55618
Overall Influence
1925 - 2020 (95 years)
Billie Lee Turner was an American botanist and professor of botany at the University of Texas at Austin where he also directed the botany research programme and herbarium. He died from COVID-19 in Round Rock, Texas, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas.
Go to Profile#4149
Carolyn King
#70985
Overall Influence
Carolyn Mary King is a New Zealand zoologist specialising in mammals, particularly small rodents and mustelids. She is currently a professor of biological sciences at the University of Waikato. Career King got her first PhD in Zoology from the University of Oxford entitled 'Studies on the ecology of the weasel ' studying under ornithologist Henry Neville Southern, before moving to DSIR's Ecology Division and from there to the University of Waikato, where she rose to full professor.
Go to Profile#4150
Bruce Robert Rosen
#90935
Overall Influence
