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,
#4451
Peter S. Harper
#94419
Overall Influence
#4452
Frederick Bernheim
#89739
Overall Influence
1905 - 1992 (87 years)
Frederick Bernheim was an American biochemist. He was one of the founding members of the Duke University medical school and became James B. Duke Professor of Pharmacology. He published over 120 articles on biological pharmacology.
Go to Profile#4453
Niko Beerenwinkel
#69937
Overall Influence
Niko Beerenwinkel, Ph.D. , is a German mathematician, who is active in the field of computational biology; he is an associate professor of the ETH Zurich since April 2013. Awards Otto Hahn Medal - Max Planck Society ;Emmy Noether Fellowship - German National Science Foundation.
Go to Profile#4454
Lipke Bijdeley Holthuis
#94440
Overall Influence
#4455
Ray Beverton
#65820
Overall Influence
1922 - 1995 (73 years)
Raymond John Heaphy Beverton CBE FRS was an important founder of fisheries science. He is best known for the book On the Dynamics of Exploited Fish Populations which he wrote with Sidney Holt. The book is a cornerstone of modern fisheries science and remains much used today. Beverton's life and achievements are described in detail in several obituaries written by prominent figures in fisheries science.
Go to Profile#4456
Stanley T. Crooke
#94452
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
#4457
Douglas Harold Copp
#65793
Overall Influence
1915 - 1998 (83 years)
Douglas Harold Copp was a Canadian scientist who discovered and named the hormone calcitonin, which is used in the treatment of bone disease. Born in Toronto, Ontario, he received his MD from the University of Toronto in 1939 and his PhD in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1943. In 1950 he became the first head of the physiology department in the newly established Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia.
Go to Profile#4458
Jeffrey A. Wilson
#67549
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Jeffrey A. Wilson, also known as JAW, is a paleontologist and professor of geological sciences and assistant curator at the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan. His doctoral dissertation was on sauropod evolution and phylogeny, and he has continued this work in cladistic analysis and revision of the group . With Paul Sereno, he defined the clades Macronaria and Somphospondyli .
Go to Profile#4459
Dario DiFrancesco
#87267
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Dario DiFrancesco is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Milano. In 1979, he and collaborators discovered the so-called "funny" current in cardiac pacemaker cells, a new mechanism involved in the generation of cardiac spontaneous activity and autonomic regulation of heart rate. That initiated a new field of research in the heart and brain, where hyperpolarization-activated, cyclic nucleotide-gated channels, the molecular components of "funny" channels cloned in the late 90's, are today known to play fundamental roles in health and disease. Clinically relevant exploitation of the prop...
Go to Profile#4460
Frans Van Roy
#94486
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Frans Van Roy is a Belgian molecular biologist and professor at the University of Ghent . He is head of the VIB Department for Molecular Biomedical Research, UGent. His research interest is on the molecular mechanisms underlying the pathology and the cure of cancer and inflammation-related disorders.
Go to Profile#4461
Adrienne Fairhall
#55275
Overall Influence
Adrienne Fairhall is a University Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics and an adjunct Professor in the Departments of Physics and Applied Mathematics, as well as the director of the Computational Neuroscience Program and co-director of the Institute for Neuroengineering at the University of Washington.
Go to Profile#4462
Herbert Gutfreund
#73451
Overall Influence
1921 - 2021 (100 years)
Herbert Gutfreund , better known as Freddie Gutfreund, was a British biochemist of Austrian origin, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Bristol. Gutfreund died in March 2021 at the age of 99.
Go to Profile#4463
Judy Mikovits
#17893
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Judy Anne Mikovits is an American former research scientist who is known for her discredited medical claims, such as that murine endogenous retroviruses are linked to chronic fatigue syndrome . As an outgrowth of these claims, she has engaged in anti-vaccination activism, promoted conspiracy theories, and been accused of scientific misconduct. She has made false claims about vaccines, COVID-19, and CFS, among others.
Go to Profile#4464
G. Michael Besser
#94517
Overall Influence
#4465
Michael First
#20554
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Michael B. First is an American psychiatrist who focuses on diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. He is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University. First was one of the editors of DSM-IV-TR, the Editor of Text and Criteria for the DSM-IV, and the editor of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. He also served as consultant to the World Health Organization for the revision of ICD-11.
Go to Profile#4466
Carmine Pariante
#92234
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Carmine Maria Pariante FRCPsych is professor of biological psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London, and consultant perinatal psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust. He also works as the lead for the Affective Disorders and Interface with Medicine theme at the National Institute for Health and Care Research Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre .
Go to Profile#4467
William A. Berggren
#94557
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
#4468
Roger Wartell
#89718
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Roger Martin Wartell is the former chair of the school of biology, part of the College of Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Biography Early life Roger Wartell was born in New York, New York. He received his B.S. degree in physics from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1966. In 1971 he received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Rochester, where he worked in the group of Elliott Waters Montroll on the DNA helix-coil transition. From 1971 to 1973 he was a NIH postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Robert Wells at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a visiting...
Go to Profile#4469
Gideon Goldstein
#94569
Overall Influence
#4470
Ann Tsukamoto
#76867
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Ann Tsukamoto was born in California on July 6, 1952. She is well known now as an Asian American stem cell researcher and inventor. During her career, she co-patented a process that allowed the human stem cell to be isolated, and the patent was granted in 1991. Tsukamoto’s research and contributions in the medical field have led to groundbreaking advancements of stem cell research as it pertains to cancer patients. She is a pioneer in her field, yet is underrepresented for her discoveries.
Go to Profile#4471
Frederick S. Rosen
#94616
Overall Influence
#4472
Elizabeth A. Phelps
#62843
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Elizabeth Anya Phelps is the Pershing Square Professor of Human Neuroscience at Harvard University in the Department of Psychology. She is a cognitive neuroscientist known for her research at the intersection of memory, learning, and emotion. She was the recipient of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society Distinguished Scholar Award and the 21st Century Scientist Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, as well as other honors and awards in her field. Phelps was honored with the 2018 Thomas William Salmon Lecture and Medal in Psychiatry at the New York Academy of Medicine. She r...
Go to Profile#4473
Otto Hutter
#56216
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Otto Fred Hutter was an Austrian-born British physiologist who was Regius Professor of Physiology at the University of Glasgow. Biography Hutter was born in Vienna, Austria in February 1924. His father, Isaak, from Lviv , had joined the Austro-Hungarian army to fight in the First World War, after which he settled in Austria. He married Elisabeth Grünberg, a nurse, and worked as an estate agent.
Go to Profile#4474
John Blangero
#61116
Overall Influence
John Blangero is an American human geneticist who ranks in the top 3000 researchers in the world in terms of scholarly citations. His research has been highly funded by the National Institutes of Health where he is reported to have obtained more than $64 million in direct funding for genetic studies of common diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and psychiatric diseases. He is a professor in the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine in Brownsville, Texas, where he is also Director of the Genomics Computing Center at the South Texas Diabetes and Obesity Institute.
Go to Profile#4475
Clare Blackburn
#59032
Overall Influence
Catherine Clare Blackburn is a British biologist. She received her Bachelor of Science degree at University of Edinburgh in 1984 and her PhD at Imperial College London in 1991. Following Wellcome Trust fellowships at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, University of Oxford, she returned to the University of Edinburgh in 1997. Since 2011, she has been Professor of Tissue Stem Cell Biology at the Centre for Regenerative Medicine.
Go to Profile#4476
David Tuveson
#84871
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
David Arthur Tuveson is an American cancer biologist and is currently Roy J. Zuckerberg Professor of Cancer Research as well as The Cancer Center Director at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Dr. Tuveson is also the Chief Scientist for the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research. He is known for developing some of the first mouse models of pancreatic cancer and more recently, for his work developing pancreatic cancer organoids.
Go to Profile#4477
Cornelis Melief
#93654
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Cornelis Joseph Maria Melief is a globally recognised immunology expert specialising in cancer immunology and immunotherapy, with special focus on therapeutic cancer vaccines. He is Emeritus Professor, former head of the Department of Immunohematology and Blood Transfusion at the Leiden University Medical Center, and Chief Scientific Officer at ISA Therapeutics in Netherlands. He is known for his work in the field of cancer immunology, devising new cancer therapies based on the activation of the patient’s own immune system.
Go to Profile#4478
George B. Craig
#83452
Overall Influence
1930 - 1995 (65 years)
George B. Craig, Jr. was an American biologist and entomologist, the Clark Professor of Biology at the University of Notre Dame, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the National Institutes of Health Merit Award.
Go to Profile#4479
Colin W. Clark
#83738
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (95 years)
Colin Whitcomb Clark is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at The University of British Columbia. Clark specializes in behavioral ecology and the economics of natural resources, specifically, in the management of commercial fisheries. Clark was named a Fellow of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics & Trade in 2016 for his contributions to bioeconomics. Clark's impact upon fisheries economics through his scholarly work is encapsulated in Mathematical Bioeconomics: The Mathematics of Conservation, which is considered to be a classic contribution in environmental economic theory.
Go to Profile#4480
Pamela Sklar
#65332
Overall Influence
1959 - 2017 (58 years)
Pamela Sklar was an American psychiatrist and neuroscientist. She was Chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, and genetic and genomic sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She was also chief of the Division of Psychiatric Genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Sklar is known for her large-scale gene discovery studies in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and for making some of the first statistically meaningful gene identifications in both mental illnesses.
Go to Profile#4481
H. robson Macdonald
#94713
Overall Influence
#4482
Michael Locke
#75054
Overall Influence
1929 - 2013 (84 years)
Michael Locke was an English-born Canadian biologist. He was Chair of Zoology at Western University from 1971 to 1985 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Go to Profile#4483
Milton Zaitlin
#91160
Overall Influence
1927 - 2016 (89 years)
Milton Zaitlin was an American virologist who spent most of his academic career as a professor of plant pathology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Education and academic career Zaitlin was born on April 2, 1927, in Mt. Vernon, New York. He was an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, from which he received his bachelor's degree in plant pathology in 1949. After a brief period conducting research at the California Institute of Technology, he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1954 under the supervision of Samuel G.
Go to Profile#4484
Anne Innis Dagg
#50093
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Anne Christine Innis Dagg is a Canadian zoologist, feminist, and author of numerous books. A pioneer in the study of animal behaviour in the wild, Dagg is credited with being the first to study wild giraffes. Her impact on current understandings of giraffe biology and behaviour were the focus of the 2011 CBC radio documentary Wild Journey: The Anne Innis Story the 2018 documentary film The Woman Who Loves Giraffes, and the 2021 children’s book ‘’The Girl Who Loved Giraffes and Became the World’s First Giraffologist’’.
Go to Profile#4485
Tron Frede Thingstad
#88812
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Tron Frede Thingstad is a Norwegian scientist. Professor Thingstad is leading a research group on marine microbiology at the Department of Biology, University of Bergen. His work has facilitated understanding the role of microbes in marine ecosystems, including the microbial loop.
Go to Profile#4486
Joanna Masel
#85475
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Joanna Monti-Masel is an American theoretical evolutionary biologist. Since 2016 she has been a full professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. She studies the question of evolvability, namely, why evolution works given that mutations to working systems will usually be detrimental to their function.
Go to Profile#4487
Ranbir Chander Sobti
#50281
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Ranbir Chander Sobti is an Indian educationist, cell biologist. He is a former vice chancellor of the Panjab University, Chandigarh and Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow. He is known to have involved in advanced research in plant genetic studies and has written over 240 articles, and 22 books including Essentials of Biotechnology and Emerging Trends in Biomedical Science and Health. He is an elected Fellow of several major science academies such as Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, National Academy of Medical Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India, and Punjab Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#4488
Núria López Bigas
#88739
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Núria López Bigas is a Spanish biologist and research professor with expertise in medical genetics, computational biology, and bioinformatics. She is an ICREA professor at Pompeu Fabra University and she also leads the Biomedical Genomics Research Group at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, Spain. Her research is focused on developing computational approaches to investigate cancer genomes.
Go to Profile#4489
Margaret Livingstone
#51818
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Margaret Stratford Livingstone is the Takeda Professor of Neurobiology in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School in the field of visual perception. She authored the book Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing. She was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2020.
Go to Profile#4490
Robert Stuart Edgar
#79700
Overall Influence
1930 - 2016 (86 years)
Robert Stuart Edgar was a geneticist. Upon graduating from McGill University, Edgar pursued graduate study at the University of Rochester. After completing his doctorate, he began teaching and doing research at the California Institute of Technology in 1957. While at Caltech he carried out research that explained the mechanisms by which bacterial viruses assemble their component parts into a functional virus particle. As part of this research he developed the important experimental strategy of using "conditional" mutants as an experimental tool to elucidate complex biological phenomena.
Go to Profile#4491
Christian Sidor
#78813
Overall Influence
Christian Alfred Sidor is an American vertebrate paleontologist. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Biology, University of Washington in Seattle, as well as Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology and Associate Director for Research and Collections at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. His research focuses on Permian and Triassic tetrapod evolution, especially on therapsids.
Go to Profile#4492
Jane Clarke
#42937
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jane Clarke is an English biochemist and academic. Since October 2017, she has served as President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. She is also Professor of Molecular Biophysics, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. She was previously a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#4493
Carl Schreck
#88063
Overall Influence
Carl Bernhard Schreck is an American biologist specializing in comparative endocrinology of fishes, best known for his contributions to our knowledge of stress in fish. Since 1975 he has been a professor at Oregon State University, holding the position of senior scientist and leader of the Oregon Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.
Go to Profile#4494
Wei Ji Ma
#28724
Overall Influence
Wei Ji Ma is a professor at New York University in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Neural Science. Ma focuses on the areas of perception, decision-making, and memory. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics from University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Ma is the 2021 recipient of the Jeffrey L. Elman Prize for Scientific Achievement and Community Building from the Cognitive Science Society.
Go to Profile#4495
Eduardo H. Rapoport
#79550
Overall Influence
1927 - 2017 (90 years)
Eduardo Hugo Rapoport was an Argentinian ecologist and emeritus professor at Universidad Nacional del Comahue. He is widely known for his fundamental work on soil biology, biological invasions, and urban ecology and, in particular, for his contributions to the biogeography .
Go to Profile#4496
Göran Möller
#94917
Overall Influence
#4497
Martin D. Brand
#94919
Overall Influence
#4498
Józef Razowski
#80620
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Józef Razowski is a Polish entomologist and lepidopterist specializing in Tortricidae. He is an honorary member of the Polish Entomological Society and a working member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences . From 1988 to 1997, Razowski headed the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals.
Go to Profile#4499
Meenakshi Banerjee
#46341
Overall Influence
Meenakshi Banerjee is an Indian cyanobacteriologist and the head of the Center for Applied Algal Research at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She is the former head of the Bioscience Department of Barkatullah University, Bhopal.
Go to Profile#4500
Rob Klose
#86411
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Rob Klose is a Canadian researcher and Professor of Genetics at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford. His research investigates how chromatin-based and epigenetic mechanisms contribute to the ways in which gene expression is regulated.
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