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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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#4151

Graham Fairchild

#71195

Overall Influence

1906 - 1994 (88 years)

Alexander Graham Bell Fairchild was an American entomologist, and a member of the Fairchild family, descendants of Thomas Fairchild of Stratford, Connecticut and one of two grandsons of the scientist and inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, for whom he was named, and son of David Fairchild, a botanist and plant explorer.

#4152

William W. Murdoch

#32590

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

William W. Murdoch is a Charles A. Storke II professor of population ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Over the years, his research has focused primarily on the subjects of population regulation, predator–prey dynamics, and biological control. He has also contributed extensively to understanding the scientific and socioeconomic ramifications caused by human overpopulation and environmental degradation. He was the recipient of the 1990 Robert H. MacArthur Award granted by the Ecological Society of America. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences , the American...

#4153

Eric Barnard

#86807

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

Eric Albert Barnard was a British neuroscientist, and Professor at University of Cambridge. He was educated at King's College London . He was a fellow of King's College from 1956–1959 after which he was Assistant Lecturer and Lecturer . He was an Association Professor of Biochemical Pharmacology at the State University of New York , Professor of Biochemistry and then Head of the Biochemistry Department . He was appointed Rank Professor of Physiological Biochemistry at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London from 1976 to 1985, acting as Chairman of the Division of Life Sciences...

#4154

Neal L. First

#86251

Overall Influence

1930 - 2014 (84 years)

Neal Lloyd First was an American biologist. Birth and education Neal L. First was born in 1930. Awards and honors Neal L. First received several awards. He received the Animal Science Morrison Award, the Upjohn Research Award, the Society for the Study of Reproduction Research Award, the National Association of Animal Breeders Research Award and the Von Humboldt Award. In 1996/7, he received the Wolf Prize in Agriculture "for his pioneering research in the reproductive biology of livestock". He was at the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison when he received the prize.

#4155

David Gavaghan

#54679

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

David J. Gavaghan is Professor of Computational Biology in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford. He is also the director of the Life Sciences Interface Doctoral Training Centre, Principal Investigator of the Integrative Biology project and Research Fellow in Mathematics at New College, Oxford.

#4156

Michael F. Land

#48162

Overall Influence

1942 - 2020 (78 years)

Michael Francis Land FRS was a British neurobiologist. He was a professor of neurobiology in the vision laboratory at the Sussex Centre for Neuroscience, University of Sussex, England. Land's research was on different aspects of animal and human vision. His interests were in the optics of the eyes of marine animals, including scallops, shrimps and deep-water crustaceans. He also studied visual behaviour in spiders and insects, particularly during pursuit. This led to an interest in eye movement in animals and later in man.

#4157

Dario Maestripieri

#55744

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Dario Maestripieri is an Italian behavioral biologist who is known for his research and writings about biological aspects of behavior in nonhuman primates and humans. He is currently a professor of Comparative Human Development, Evolutionary Biology, and Neurobiology at The University of Chicago.

#4158

Imre Friedmann

#70733

Overall Influence

1921 - 2007 (86 years)

E. Imre Friedmann was a biologist, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Biology at Florida State University and the NASA Ames Research Center, and Director, Polar Desert Research Center. He studied endolithic microbial communities and astrobiology. After escaping the Holocaust, Friedmann received his Ph.D. in botany from the University of Vienna, Austria in 1951, and he died on June 11, 2007.

#4159

Lisa Coussens

#90590

Overall Influence

Lisa M. Coussens is an American cancer scientist who is Chair of the Department of Cell, Developmental and Cancer Biology and Professor and Associate Director for Basic Research in the Knight Cancer Institute at the Oregon Health & Science University. She serves as President of the American Association for Cancer Research.

#4160

Yves Rumpler

#75498

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Yves Rumpler , is a French researcher and primatologist. He was a professor of embryology and primatology at the Louis Pasteur University of Strasbourg until he retired in 2007. Career In 1959 Yves Rumpler was appointed assistant chief in the Institute of Embryology at the University of Strasbourg and until 1966 his research focused on traditional subjects studied at Strasbourg e.g. thyroid hormones, teratology. From 1966 to 1976, Yves Rumpler was an associate lecturer in histology and embryology at the National School of Medicine, Tananarive, Madagascar . He undertook studies on the systemati...

#4161

Robert Soost

#82190

Overall Influence

1920 - 2009 (89 years)

Robert K. Soost was a citrus expert and professor of genetics at University of California, Riverside, and sixth curator of the University of California Citrus Variety Collection. He studied at UC Berkeley.

#4162

Patrick S. Herendeen

#81942

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Dr. Patrick Stephen Herendeen is an American botanist with expertise in paleobotany and evolutionary biology of Cretaceous Age fossil plants. He is the Senior Director of Systematics and Evolutionary Biology and Senior Scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden and teaches at Northwestern University. Herendeen is the president of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy.

#4163

Wilfried Thuiller

#91133

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

#4164

Randall James Bayer

Randall James Bayer

#82176

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Randall James Bayer is an American systematic botanist born in Buffalo, New York, who spent his childhood in East Aurora. He earned a B.Sc. with major in plant breeding and minor in horticulture in 1978 from Cornell University; an M.Sc. in systematic botany in 1980 from the Ohio State University; and a Ph.D. in 1984 from the Ohio State University with the dissertation Evolutionary Investigations in Antennaria. His interest in the genus Antennaria was inspired by noted evolutionary botanist George Ledyard Stebbins who was a visiting professor at the Ohio State University in 1978–1979.

#4165

Daniela Rhodes

#27701

Overall Influence

Daniela Bargellini Rhodes FRS is an Italian structural and molecular biologist. She was a senior scientist at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, where she worked, and later studied for her PhD under the supervision of Nobel laureate Aaron Klug. Continuing her work under the tutelage of Aaron Klug at Cambridge, she was appointed group leader in 1983, obtained tenure in 1987 and was promoted to senior scientist in 1994 . Subsequently, she served as director of studies between 2003 and 2006. She has also been visiting professor at both "La Sapienza" in Rome, Italy and the...

#4166

Laura Piddock

#78367

Overall Influence

Laura Piddock is a microbiologist, specialising in antibiotics and antibiotic resistance in bacteria. She is Professor Emeritus at the University of Birmingham, UK and also Scientific Director within the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership.

#4167

Giovanni Targher

#91175

Overall Influence

#4168

Susan McConnell

Susan McConnell

#68750

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Susan McConnell is a neurobiologist who studies the development of neural circuits in the mammalian cerebral cortex. She is a professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, where she is the Susan B. Ford Professor of Humanities and Sciences, a Bass University Fellow, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#4169

Graeme Milligan

#91197

Overall Influence

#4170

Joel Moss

#91203

Overall Influence

#4171

Michel Goldman

#61836

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Michel Goldman is a Belgian medical doctor who specialized in internal medicine and immunology. Biography Michel Goldman graduated as a medical doctor from Université Libre de Bruxelles , Belgium, and received his PhD in medical sciences from Université de Genève, Switzerland. He is board certified in internal medicine and clinical biology .

#4172

Kåre Bremer

#72163

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Kåre Bremer is a Swedish botanist and academic. He has also been Vice-Chancellor of Stockholm University. Career Professor Bremer received his doctorate in Botany from Stockholm University in 1976, where he worked as lecturer and research assistant in the department from 1972–1975, and full-time from 1976. In 1979 he was appointed Docent. In 1980 he became Curator at the Museum of Natural History in Stockholm in the Department of Spermatophyte Botany. From 1985–1986 he was also a Research Associate and BA Krukoff Curator of African Botany at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

#4173

Nicolas Le Novère

Nicolas Le Novère

#75819

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Nicolas Le Novère is a British and French biologist. His research focuses on modeling signaling pathways and developing tools to share mathematical models. Education Le Novère obtained his Baccalauréat at the Prytanée National Militaire. He received a MSc in Biology and Biochemistry from the École Normale Supérieure, a BSc in Cellular Biology and Physiology , and a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology from the Pierre and Marie Curie University. From 1999 to 2001, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge .

#4174

Alina Chan

#34652

Overall Influence

Alina Chan is a Canadian molecular biologist specializing in gene therapy and cell engineering at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she is a postdoctoral fellow. During the COVID-19 pandemic she became known for questioning the prevailing consensus regarding the origins of the virus and publicly advocating a laboratory escape hypothesis.

#4175

José Cândido de Melo Carvalho

#80578

Overall Influence

1914 - 1994 (80 years)

José Cândido de Melo Carvalho was a Brazilian zoologist who specialized in entomology and was a world authority on the true bugs or Hemiptera. He was director of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi , in Belém, and of the Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro. His abilities both in science and in the field of politics helped Brazil to develop and maintain a high level of systematic biology.

#4176

Géraldine Gebhart

#91285

Overall Influence

#4177

Raghavendra Gadagkar

Raghavendra Gadagkar

#47234

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Raghavendra Gadagkar is an honorary professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India, who studies evolution of social behaviour using eusocial insects using Ropalidia marginata, a locally common wasp as a model. He was, from 2014 to 2016, the president of the Indian National Science Academy.

#4178

Asis Datta

#78835

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Asis Datta is an Indian biochemist, molecular biologist and genetic engineer, known for his research on genetically modified foods and food nutritional security. He was the founding Director of the National Institute of Plant Genome Research and is credited with the discovery of genes that assist in extended preservation of fruits and vegetables. He is a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, the highest Indian award and in the Science category, and was awarded the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri, by the Government of India, in 1999. In 2008, he was included again in ...

#4179

Wolf-Dieter Heiss

#77156

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Wolf-Dieter Heiss is an Austrian neuroscientist, director of the department of neurology, University of Cologne and of department of general neurology at the Max-Planck-Institute for Neurological Research, Cologne .

#4180

Marian Koshland

Marian Koshland

#54924

Overall Influence

1921 - 1997 (76 years)

Marian Elliott "Bunny" Koshland was an American immunologist who discovered that the differences in amino acid composition of antibodies explain the efficiency and effectiveness with which they combat a huge range of foreign invaders.

#4181

Rima Rozen

#65243

Overall Influence

Rima Rozen is a Canadian geneticist who is a professor at McGill University. Her current research focuses on genetic and nutritional deficiencies in folate metabolism and their impact on complex traits.

#4182

Thomas van der Hammen

Thomas van der Hammen

#73829

Overall Influence

1924 - 2010 (86 years)

Thomas van der Hammen was a Dutch palaeontologist, botanist and geologist. He had published more than 160 works in five languages. Biography Thomas van der Hammen was born in the city of Schiedam in South Holland, western The Netherlands and studied botany and palaeontology at Leiden University from 1944 to 1949. He was a deeply religious man.

#4183

John Leslie Dowe

#64052

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

John Leslie Dowe is an Australian botanist who specialises in palms. Published names Archontophoenix maxima Dowe Austrobaileya 4: 235.Balaka streptostachys D.Fuller & Dowe Palms 43: 10.Livistona decora Dowe Austrobaileya 6: 979.Calyptrocalyx hollrungii Dowe & M.D.Ferrero Blumea 46: 226.

#4184

Phillip D. Zamore

#82092

Overall Influence

Phillip D. Zamore is an American molecular biologist and developed the first in vitro system for studying the mechanism of RNA interference . He is the Gretchen Stone Cook Professor of Biomedical Sciences and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, located in Worcester, Massachusetts. Zamore is the chair of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at UMass Chan Medical School, established in 2009, and has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 2008.

#4185

Kerstin Johannesson

#91369

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Kerstin Johannesson is a Swedish biologist. From the age of fifteen, Johannesson resided on the island of Tjärnö in Strömstad Municipality during the summer, where the University of Gothenburg's Tjärnö Marine Biological Laboratory was located. Living on Tjärnö inspired Johannesson's interest in marine sciences, and she later attended the University of Gothenburg to study biology. She subsequently joined the University of Gothenburg's faculty, and became an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

#4186

Marcus R. Ross

#57571

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Marcus R. Ross is an American young earth creationist and vertebrate paleontologist. Ross was featured in a February 2007 New York Times article about the conflict between his young Earth creationist beliefs and his doctoral dissertation . His dissertation was on tracking the diversity, biostratigraphy, and extinction of mosasaurs, an extinct group of marine reptiles whose remains are found in Late Cretaceous period deposits around the world.

#4187

Steven M. Smith

Steven M. Smith

#69578

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Steven M. Smith is Emeritus Professor of Plant Genetics and Biochemistry at the University of Tasmania in Australia and Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Plant Success in Nature and Agriculture.

#4188

Bertha Madras

#53457

Overall Influence

Bertha Kalifon Madras is a professor of psychobiology in the Department of Psychiatry and the chair of the Division of Neurochemistry at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University. She served as associate director for public education in the division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School. Madras has published research in the areas of drug addiction , ADHD, and Parkinson's disease.

#4189

Kenneth H. Mann

#85881

Overall Influence

1923 - 2010 (87 years)

Kenneth H. Mann received the first Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography in 1994. Personal data Born Kenneth Henry Mann in Dovercourt, England to parents Henry and Mabel Mann, Mann had two siblings: Eric and Margaret Needle. He married Isabel in 1946 in Scotland, 63 years before he died. He had three children: Ian, Sheila and Colin.

#4190

Rana Ellen Munns

#90174

Overall Influence

Rana Ellen Munns is an Australian botanist whose primary research has been to determine the traits that underpin salinity tolerance and adaptation to drought in crop plants. Rana was born in Sydney Australia and attended the University of Sydney, receiving her undergraduate degree in Biochemistry in 1966. She completed her Ph.D. in 1972 to begin a lifelong course of research on salt tolerance of plants first as a Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia and later at CSIRO Plant Industry in Canberra. In the early 1990s, she found that sodium exclusion was an important trait associated with the salt tolerance in wheat using a seedling stage assay.

#4191

Brian T Chait

#91411

Overall Influence

#4192

Stan Boutin

#91194

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Stanley A. Boutin is a professor of population ecology in the University of Alberta Department of Biological Sciences. He is scientific co-director of the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute and an Alberta Biodiversity Conservation Chair.

#4193

June Almeida

#46514

Overall Influence

1930 - 2007 (77 years)

June Dalziel Almeida was a Scottish virologist, a pioneer in virus imaging and identification. Her skills in electron microscopy earned her an international reputation. In 1964, Almeida was recruited by St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in London. By 1967, she had earned her Doctor of Science on the basis of her research and the resulting publications, while working in Canada, at Toronto's Ontario Cancer Institute and then in London at St Thomas's. she then continued her research at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School , which later became part of the Imperial College School of Medicine.

#4194

Joel Brind

#19096

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Joel Lewis Brind is a professor of human biology and endocrinology at Baruch College, City University of New York and a leading advocate of the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis, which posits that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. This idea is rejected by mainstream medical professional organizations and there is overwhelming evidence in the peer-reviewed medical literature debunking it. Brind is openly contemptuous of mainstream medical professional organizations and journals, accusing them of conducting a deliberate cover-up with the goal of "protecting the abortion industry."

#4195

John Graham Nicholls

John Graham Nicholls

#66438

Overall Influence

1929 - 2023 (94 years)

John Graham Nicholls FRS was a British, American and Swiss physiologist. Life Nicholls was an professor emeritus of physiology. He was educated at Berkhamsted School and King's College London. He received his MD from Charing Cross Hospital and a PhD from the Department of Biophysics at University College London in 1955. He worked at University College London, and the universities of Oxford, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. In 1983 he became professor of pharmacology at the Biozentrum University of Basel. After reaching emeritus status in 1998, he was professor of neurobiology at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, where he lived until his death.

#4196

Stephen Simpson

#85242

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Stephen James Simpson is the executive director of Obesity Australia and the academic director of the Charles Perkins Centre. Born in Australia, he graduated with a BSc from the University of Queensland in 1978, and completed his PhD at King's College London in 1982 on locust feeding physiology. He spent 22 years in Oxford, in Experimental Psychology, the Department of Zoology, and the University Museum of Natural History, before returning to Australia in 2005, in the School of Biological Sciences at Sydney University.

#4197

Allen J. Moore

#88506

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Allen Jonathan Moore is a distinguished research professor in the Department of Entomology at the University of Georgia, where he also serves as associate dean for research in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. He was previously the head of the university's department of genetics in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. He served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology from 2007 to 2011, and he has been editor-in-chief of the open access journal Ecology and Evolution since 2011. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Association for the Adva...

#4198

Hassan Naim

#46910

Overall Influence

Hassan Naim is a Lebanese-Swiss biochemist. He currently holds the position of Director of the "Institut für Physiologische Chemie" at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover, while collaborating regularly with the University of Hannover.

#4199

Matthew Krummel

#56670

Overall Influence

Matthew F. Krummel is a Professor in the Pathology Department at University of California, San Francisco. He is known for Systems Immunology and studies mechanisms that regulate the immune system. Career Krummel holds the Robert E. Smith Endowed Chair in Pathology and is the Chair of the UCSF ImmunoX Initiative. His lab uses real-time imaging to launch and test hypotheses related to how the immune system processes information and makes decisions. His recent discoveries include determining features of T cell membrane biology and how the movement of immune cells governs their ability to efficiently survey for antigens.

#4200

Estella Leopold

#51065

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Estella Bergere Leopold is an American paleobotanist and a conservationist. As a researcher in the United States Geological Survey, she aided in uncovering records of plant life from the Miocene around the Eniwetok and Bikini Atolls in the southern Pacific Ocean and from the Cenozoic era in the Rocky Mountains. As a professor of botany and forest sciences at the University of Washington, she directed the Quaternary Research Center, researched the forest history of the Pacific Northwest, and collaborated with Chinese paleobotanists. Leopold's work as a conservationist includes taking legal action to help save the Florissant Fossil Beds in Colorado, and fighting pollution.

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