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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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#4601

Ashani Weeraratna

#70890

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Ashani Tanuja Weeraratna is a Sri Lanka-born American cancer researcher whose findings are contributing to the scientific understanding of melanoma tumors. She is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of cancer biology and the E.V. McCollum Professor and Chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Weeraratna is a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board, which advises and assists the director of the National Cancer Institute on the activities of the national cancer program.

#4602

Meritxell Huch

#88912

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Meritxell Huch is a stem cell biologist and director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. Her research considers tissue regeneration and the development of tissue-specific disease models for human organs. She was awarded a European Research Council Consolidator Grant in 2023.

#4603

Volkmar Braun

#96142

Overall Influence

#4604

Arnold Munnich

#96152

Overall Influence

#4605

Joachim Sieper

#96154

Overall Influence

#4606

Judy Stamps

#84444

Overall Influence

Judy A. Stamps is a professor and researcher within the Department of Evolution and Ecology at University of California, Davis. Stamps' research focuses on conservation ecology and ethology. Specifically, her research is centered in behavioral ecology, habitat selection, animal personality, plasticity in lizard communication, and implications of developmental processes for problems in behavioral ecology and conservation biology.

#4607

George Tawia Odamtten

#50348

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

George Tawia Odamtten, is a Ghanaian mycologist and academic at the University of Ghana. He was professor at the Department of Plant and Environmental Biology and formerly dean of the erstwhile faculty of science of the University of Ghana. He is the editor-in-chief of the Ghana Journal of Science and a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#4608

John H. Clark

#96223

Overall Influence

#4609

W. Ian Mcdonald

#96229

Overall Influence

#4610

Yuval Neria

#24941

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Yuval Neria is a Professor of Medical Psychology at the Departments of Psychiatry and Epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center , and Director of Trauma and PTSD Program, and a Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Department of Psychiatry. He is a recipient of the Medal of Valor, Israel's highest decoration, for his exploits during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

#4611

John Todd

#87609

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

John Andrew Todd FMedSci FRS is Professor of Precision Medicine at the University of Oxford, director of the Wellcome Center for Human Genetics and the JDRF/Wellcome Trust Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory, in addition to Jeffrey Cheah Fellow in Medicine at Brasenose College. He works in collaboration with David Clayton and Linda Wicker to examine the molecular basis of type 1 diabetes.

#4612

Dennis Anthony Carson

#96286

Overall Influence

#4613

John Postlethwait

John Postlethwait

#92781

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

John H. Postlethwait is a professor of biology and author at University of Oregon. Education In 1966, Postlethwait graduated from Purdue University with a bachelor's degree in biology and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He completed predoctoral work in development genetics at University of California, Irvine in 1970. At Case Western Reserve University, Postlethwait earned a doctorate in developmental genetics before completing postdoctoral research in molecular genetics at Harvard University.

#4614

Adam C. Siepel

#67766

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Adam C. Siepel is an American computational biologist known for his research in comparative genomics and population genetics, particularly the development of statistical methods and software tools for identifying evolutionarily conserved sequences. Siepel is currently Chair of the Simons Center for Quantitative Biology and Professor in the Watson School for Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

#4615

David Gruber

#13486

Overall Influence

David Gruber is an American marine biologist, a Presidential Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences at Baruch College, City University of New York, and a National Geographic Explorer. Early life Gruber was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and received his B.S. at the University of Rhode Island, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University, a Master of Environmental Management from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography at Rutgers University Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences. He completed a post-doctoral position in Molecular Psychiatry at Brown University. David...

#4616

Zeng Fanyi

#83134

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Zeng Fanyi is a Chinese stem cell scientist and professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University medical school. Biography Zeng was born in Shanghai in 1968 with ancestral roots in Shunde, Guangdong province.

#4617

Monique Breteler

#83195

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Monique Maria Bernadette Breteler is a Dutch neuroepidemiologist. She is Director of Population Health Sciences at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases , Professor of Population Health Sciences at the University of Bonn, and Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. She has been a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2015.

#4618

Thomas W. Whitaker

Thomas W. Whitaker

#83009

Overall Influence

1904 - 1993 (89 years)

Thomas Wallace Whitaker was an American botanist and horticulturist who spent most of his career working as a geneticist for the United States Department of Agriculture . He specialized in the study of economically important plants such as squashes, investigating their systematics and resistance to disease.

#4619

Edward Cocking

#94179

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Edward Charles Daniel Cocking FRS , known as Ted Cocking, was a British plant scientist, and Emeritus Professor at University of Nottingham. He was on the Board of Trustees of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, from 1983 to 1993. He was on the Board of Directors of Lawes Agricultural Trust Company and was a foreign fellow of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

#4620

Rajiv Khosla

#55609

Overall Influence

Rajiv Khosla is an Indian-American scientist and professor of precision agriculture. He is best known for his work on measurement and management of in-field soil and crop spatial variability for nutrients.

#4621

Jerzy Jurka

#73315

Overall Influence

1950 - 2014 (64 years)

Jerzy Władysław Jurka was a Polish-American computational and molecular biologist. He served as the assistant director of research at the Linus Pauling Institute prior to founding the Genetic Information Research Institute. He collaborated with several notable scientists including Linus Pauling, George Irving Bell, Roy Britten, Temple Smith, and Emile Zuckerkandl. His Erdős number is 3, using the path through Temple Smith and Stanislaw Ulam.

#4622

John McNamara

#21265

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

John M. McNamara is an English mathematical biologist and Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Biology in the School of Mathematics at the University of Bristol. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2012. In 2013, he and Alasdair Houston jointly received the ASAB Medal, and in 2014, he received the Weldon Memorial Prize. In 2018, he was awarded the Sewall Wright Award from the American Society of Naturalists.

#4623

Ransom A. Myers

Ransom A. Myers

#67247

Overall Influence

1952 - 2007 (55 years)

Ransom Aldrich "Ram" Myers, Jr. was a world-renowned American-Canadian marine biologist and conservationist. Born in Lula, Mississippi, he was the son of cotton planter, Ransom Aldrich Myers, Sr. and Fay A. Mitchell Myers. At age 16, in 1968, Myers won an international science fair for building an "X-ray crystallograph," which measured the symmetry of atoms.

#4624

James F. Gusella

#96537

Overall Influence

#4625

Esmond Emerson Snell

#51692

Overall Influence

1914 - 2003 (89 years)

Esmond Emerson Snell was an American biochemist who spent his career researching vitamins and nutritional requirements of bacteria and yeast. He is well known for his study of lactic acid-producing bacteria, developing microbiological assays for a number of key nutrients; the discovery of more than half of known vitamins has been attributed to the use of this work. He discovered several B vitamins, including folic acid, and characterized the biochemistry of vitamin B6 .

#4626

Richard H. Rahe

#96556

Overall Influence

#4627

Robert V. Farese Jr.

#96514

Overall Influence

Robert V. Farese, Jr., is an American physician-scientist and professor of Cell Biology at the Sloan Kettering Institute of Memorial Sloan Kettering. He is an internationally recognized leader in the study of cellular lipid metabolism and has made seminal contributions to our understanding of energy storage as triglycerides in cellular organelles called lipid droplets.

#4628

Anne Glover

#28451

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Dame Lesley Anne Glover is a Scottish biologist and academic. She was Professor of molecular biology and cell biology at the University of Aberdeen before being named Vice Principal for External Affairs and Dean for Europe. She served as Chief Scientific Adviser to the President of the European Commission from 2012 to 2014. In 2018 she joined the Principal's senior advisory team at the University of Strathclyde.

#4629

Raúl Cuero

#94802

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Raúl Gonzalo Cuero Rengifo is a Colombian professor of microbiology. From 1988 through 2012 he was a professor at Prairie View A&M University researching biological resistance to ultraviolet light. The work was supported in part by NASA and led to at least one publication and patent. During this period, Colombian media portrayed Cuero as "one of the greatest scientists in the world" who was internationally acknowledged as one of the greatest Colombian inventors, stated he had over 100 publications in scientific journals, and claimed he had won a significant award from NASA. Since 2012, he ...

#4630

Haralampos Moutsopoulos

#96585

Overall Influence

#4631

Hans Ellegren

#96597

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

#4632

Sebsebe Demissew

Sebsebe Demissew

#43038

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Sebsebe Demissew is a Professor of Plant Systematics and Biodiversity at Addis Ababa University and Executive Director of the Gullele Botanic Garden in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Education Demissew was educated at Addis Ababa University where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology in 1977 followed by a Master of Science degree in Botany 1980. He completed postgraduate study at Uppsala University in Sweden where he was awarded a PhD in 1985 for research on the botany of the Maytenus genus of plants in tropical Africa and Arabia.

#4633

Amanda Vincent

#80657

Overall Influence

Amanda Vincent is a Canadian marine biologist and conservationist, one of the world's leading experts on seahorses and their relatives. She currently holds the chair of the IUCN SSC Seahorse, Pipefish and Seadragon Specialist Group and is the marine representative on the IUCN's International Red List Committee as well as being the chair of its Marine Conservation Committee. She previously held the Canada Research Chair in Marine Conservation at the UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia , Canada from 2002 to 2012. Vincent co-founded and directs Project...

#4634

Christopher Stanislaus Potten

#96643

Overall Influence

#4635

Steven Marsh

#78814

Overall Influence

Steven GE Marsh BSc ARCS PhD FRCPath, is a British immunogeneticist and leader in the field of histocompatibility and immunogenetics having published more than 400 scientific papers on the subject. Marsh holds a professorship in the subject at University College London and the deputy directorship of research and leader of the HLA Informatics Group at the charity Anthony Nolan.

#4636

Arthur m. Krieg

#96685

Overall Influence

#4637

Sarah Spiegel

#96701

Overall Influence

#4638

Scott Baker

#75885

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

C. Scott Baker is an American molecular biologist and cetacean specialist. He is Associate Director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. He is also Adjunct Professor of Molecular Ecology and Evolution at the University of Auckland, and Editor of the Journal of Heredity.

#4639

Lawrence M. Weiss

#96736

Overall Influence

#4640

Barbara E. Murray

#96742

Overall Influence

#4641

Valsamma Eapen

#33614

Overall Influence

Valsamma Eapen is a chair of infant, child and adolescent psychiatry at UNSW Sydney. She is a fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK.

#4642

Mark Woolhouse

#66712

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Mark Edward John Woolhouse OBE FRSE FMedSci is professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the Usher Institute in the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

#4643

Anne Kelso

#73206

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Professor Anne Kelso is an Australian biomedical researcher specialising in immunology and influenza. She is the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Government's National Health and Medical Research Council .

#4644

Ligia Gargallo

#68356

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Ligia Gargallo is a Chilean chemist and university professor of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Career She works at the University of Tarapacá and at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, in Santiago. She received a bachelor's degree in chemical pharmaceutical at the University of Chile in 1959, degrees in chemistry from Paris Dauphine University and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, a doctorate in chemical sciences at the University of Liège in Belgium in 1972, and a doctorate in chemistry from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Her areas of investigation are focused in Polymers and Macromolecules.

#4645

Eugene G. Munroe

#83431

Overall Influence

1919 - 2008 (89 years)

Eugene Gordon Munroe was a Canadian entomologist who discovered numerous species of insects. He worked for the Insect Systematics and Biological Control Unit, Entomology Division in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

#4646

Daniel A. Portnoy

#89811

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Daniel A. Portnoy is a microbiologist, the Edward E. Penhoet Distinguished Chair in Global Public Health and Infectious Diseases, and a Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and in the Division of Microbiology in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is one of the world's foremost experts on Listeria monocytogenes, the bacterium that causes the severe foodborne illness Listeriosis. He has made seminal contributions to multiple aspects of bacterial pathogenesis, cell biology, innate immunity, and cell mediated immunity using L.

#4647

Sally Temple

#36682

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Sally Temple is an American developmental neuroscientist in Albany, New York. She is a co-founder and scientific director for The Neural Stem Cell Institute and is a professor of Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology at Albany Medical College Temple is also the principal investigator in her laboratory that focuses on neural stem cells and therapies for neurological-related disorders

#4648

Raymond Dixon

#91508

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Raymond Alan Dixon FRS is a British microbiologist at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, specialising on the molecular understanding of biological nitrogen fixation in bacteria. He was educated at the University of Reading and the University of Sussex .

#4649

Joomyeong Kim

#27497

Overall Influence

Joomyeong Kim is a Russell Thompson, Jr. Family Professor of Biology at Louisiana State University. His research interests include genomic imprinting and epigenetics. Dr. Kim's laboratory is mainly involved in understanding the functions and regulatory mechanisms governing genes subject to genomic imprinting. Having previously characterized an imprinted domain located on proximal mouse chromosome 7/ human chromosome 19q13.4, his laboratory currently focuses on understanding regulatory mechanisms directing the mono-allelic expression of the seven imprinted genes in the cluster: Peg3, Usp29, Zfp264, APeg3 and Zim1, Zim2, Zim3 .

#4650

Victor E. Reuter

#96832

Overall Influence

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