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,
#4651
Nico Eisenhauer
#65892
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Nico Eisenhauer is a German biologist, soil ecologist and professor for experimental interaction ecology at Leipzig University. Scientific career Nico Eisenhauer obtained his diploma in animal ecology at the Darmstadt University of Technology in 2005, and then was awarded a doctorate in 2008 from Darmstadt University of Technology with a thesis "Earthworms in a plant diversity gradient: Direct and indirect effects on plant competition and establishment." From 2008 to 2010 he worked as Postdoc in the Jena Experiment at the Darmstadt University of Technology and Georg August University Götting...
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Jérôme Galon
#88426
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Jérôme Galon is a French biologist. He is a first class Research Director at Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale . Education Galon received his Ph.D. degree with a specialty in immunology in 1996 and did postdoctoral work at the National Institute of Health , in Bethesda between 1997 and 2001. Since 2001, he has been working at the Cordeliers Research Center, where he has been the Director of the INSERM Laboratory Integrative Cancer Immunology since 2009.
Go to Profile#4653
Arnold L. Gordon
#96860
Overall Influence
#4654
Sheena Cruickshank
#71309
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Sheena Margaret Cruickshank is a British immunologist and Professor in Biomedical Sciences and Public Engagement at the University of Manchester. She researches how immune responses of the gut are started as a result of infection and/or inflammation. Cruickshank is a science communicator.
Go to Profile#4655
Louann Brizendine
#17651
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Louann Brizendine is an American scientist, a neuropsychiatrist who is both a researcher and a clinician and professor at the University of California, San Francisco . She is the author of three books: The Female Brain , The Male Brain , and The Upgrade .
Go to Profile#4656
Guy Thwaites
#94803
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Guy Edward Thwaites is a British professor of infectious diseases at the University of Oxford, and director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. His focus is on severe bacterial infections, including meningitis and Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infection, and tuberculosis. He is a former first-class cricketer.
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Herb Pardes
#28558
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Herbert Pardes is an American physician, psychiatrist, and the executive vice-chairman of NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital. He was the Dean of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons when he was selected to be the inaugural CEO of the merged Presbyterian Hospital and New York Hospital. Dr Pardes retired in 2011 as CEO of the combined entity, NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital and assumed his current post. He is a national figure in psychiatry and academic medicine.
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Harini Nagendra
#93414
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Harini Nagendra is an Indian ecologist who uses satellite remote sensing coupled with field studies of biodiversity, archival research, institutional analysis, and community interviews to examine the factors shaping the social-ecological sustainability of forests and cities in the south Asian context. Her areas of interest include Urban sustainability, Ecology and development, Land change, Biodiversity and conservation.
Go to Profile#4659
H. Franklin Bunn
#96890
Overall Influence
#4660
Hubert Vaudry
#96893
Overall Influence
#4661
Hélio Gelli Pereira
#74668
Overall Influence
1918 - 1994 (76 years)
Hélio Gelli Pereira was a Brazilian-British virologist specialising in adenoviruses. Pereira was a co-recipient of the 1988 UNESCO Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology and was known for his work on the book, Viruses of Vertebrates. He contributed to several areas of virology in research and international public service.
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Michael Klagsbrun
#96906
Overall Influence
#4663
Annette Aiello
#88294
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (85 years)
Annette A. Aiello is an American zoologist, botanical entomologist, and professor. She develops academic activities at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Biography Annette Aiello was born on May 1, 1941, in New York City, New York. She initially studied commercial photography, and became interested in botany via nature photography. In 1972, Aiello obtained a BA in biology, magna cum laude, from Brooklyn College. In 1975 she obtained an MA in biology from Harvard University, followed in 1978 by a PhD in biology, defending her thesis: "A Reexamination of Portlandia and Associated Taxa", under the supervision of her advisor, botanist Richard A.
Go to Profile#4664
Marylyn D. Ritchie
#68732
Overall Influence
Marylyn D. Ritchie is a Professor of Genetics, the Director of the Center for Translational Bioinformatics, the Associate Director for Bioinformatics in the Institute for Biomedical Informatics, and the Associate Director of the Center for Precision Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#4665
Joseph P. Broderick
#96944
Overall Influence
#4666
Nancy Papalopulu
#89018
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Athanasia Papalopulu is a Wellcome Trust senior research fellow and Professor of Developmental Neuroscience in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Manchester. Education After completing her undergraduate degree in Pharmacy at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Nancy Papalopulu moved to London in 1986 to do a PhD at the National Institute for Medical Research, where she became one of Robb Krumlauf's first graduate students. There she studied the role of Hox genes in patterning the nervous system. She completed her PhD in 1991.
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Jan-Åke Gustafsson
#74390
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Jan-Åke Gustafsson is a Swedish scientist and professor in Biology, Biochemistry and Medical Nutrition. When he decided to move to Houston, Texas, USA, in 2008, the State of Texas decided to give a major US $5.5 million research grant to the University of Houston, enabling the establishment of the Center of Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling under the leadership of Jan-Åke Gustafsson. The grant was announced at a February 5, 2009, press conference by Rick Perry, Governor of Texas and running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2012 presidential election.
Go to Profile#4668
Peter Stenvinkel
#96955
Overall Influence
#4669
James J. Cimino
#54020
Overall Influence
James J. "Jim" Cimino is an American physician-scientist and biomedical informatician. He is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Informatics Institute at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University. He is an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Go to Profile#4670
Walter Erich Stumpf
#97013
Overall Influence
#4671
Patrick Druckenmiller
#67731
Overall Influence
Patrick S. Druckenmiller is a Mesozoic paleontologist, taxonomist, associate professor of geology, Earth Sciences curator, and museum director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North, where he oversees the largest single collection of Alaskan invertebrate and vertebrate fossils. He has published work on plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, mastodons, and dinosaurs in the United States, Svalbard, and Canada. He has co-authored papers on discussions of mass extinctions and biogeography. Much of his work has focused on Arctic species. He is a member of the Spitsbergen Jurassic Research group, which focuses on marine reptiles.
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Volker Dietz
#97050
Overall Influence
#4673
Isaac Witz
#56179
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Isaac P. Witz is an Israeli Immunologist and cancer researcher, professor Emeritus at the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research in Tel Aviv University . The former vice president for Research and Development and the Dean of Faculty of Life Sciences. A world-renowned cancer researcher and one of the scientists who laid the foundations of the Tumor Microenvironment research field.
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Hal Caswell
#97063
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
#4675
George Eugene Moore
#97084
Overall Influence
#4676
Daniel C. Javitt
#97097
Overall Influence
#4677
James Anderson
#65888
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
James M. Anderson is an American professor of pathology, macromolecular science and biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University. He received the Elsevier Biomaterials Gold Medal for the most significant contributions to biomaterials science by an individual from 1980 to 2005. He has been a leader in the development of prosthetics, and has been called an "internationally recognized scientist who has made pioneering and significant advancements in the understanding of the inflammatory cell biology of tissue interactions with biomaterials and implantable medical devices." Anderson...
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L. David Sibley
#97107
Overall Influence
#4679
Alan Munro
#79638
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Alan James Munro is a British immunologist and entrepreneur who served as the Master of Christ's College, Cambridge . Early life and education Munro was born in Madras, India to John Bennet Lorimer Munro, CB, CMG and his wife Gladys. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy in Scotland. He attended the University of Cambridge, specialising in biochemistry. His PhD in the area of protein synthesis was supervised by Asher Korner at the Department of Biochemistry .
Go to Profile#4680
Franco Locatelli
#97112
Overall Influence
#4681
Patrice D. Cani
#97125
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
#4682
Magnus Nordborg
#94252
Overall Influence
Magnus Nordborg is a biologist specialising in population genetics. He is the scientific director of the Gregor Mendel Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, located at the Vienna Biocenter. Awards and honours In 2003, Nordborg received the Sloan Research Fellowship.
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Nicholas Spitzer
#46950
Overall Influence
Nicholas Canaday Spitzer is a Distinguished Professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Education Spitzer received his Ph.D from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and University College, London.
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Andreas Heinz
#91813
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Andreas Heinz is a German psychiatrist and neurologist. Early life and education Andreas Heinz studied medicine, philosophy and anthropology in Bochum at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, in Berlin at the Freie Universität Berlin and at the Howard University of Washington D.C. In 1988 he submitted his dissertation Anthropological and Evolutionary Models in Schizophrenia Researchat the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
Go to Profile#4685
Paolo Bernardi
#93014
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Paolo Bernardi is an Italian professor of pathology who has an h-index of 96 and 34,893 citations of his works. He works at University of Padua in Italy. External links Paolo Bernardi
Go to Profile#4686
Wim van den Brink
#72877
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Wim van den Brink is emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Addiction at the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam. He was Director of the Amsterdam Institute for Addiction Research and Scientific Director of the National Committee for Treatment of Heroin Addiction in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
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Anton Lang
#84332
Overall Influence
1913 - 1996 (83 years)
Anton Lang was a Russian Empire-born American biologist and a plant physiologist. He was born in Saint Petersburg, his father was Georg Lang, a famous Russian Empire scientist and founding father of modern therapeutic therapies. He graduated from the University of Berlin in 1939, majoring in botany. After that, he is working as scientific assistant of Georg Melchers at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin-Dahlem. The cooperation between Anton Lang and Georg Melchers proved extremely fruitful and continued at the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen until 1949, when Anton, his wife Lydia, and his mother emigrated to North America.
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John T. Jr. Potts
#97262
Overall Influence
#4689
Terry B. Ball
#71753
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Terry Briggs Ball was the dean of Religious Education at Brigham Young University from 2006 until 2013. Biography As a young man, from 1974 to 1976 Ball served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Japan Kobe Mission. After returning to Utah, he taught Japanese in the Missionary Training Center in Provo until 1979. From 1979 to 1992 he was a Seminary and Institute of Religion teacher and administrator for the Church Educational System in Fort Thomas, Arizona, Mountain Home, Idaho, and at BYU.
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Nils Bergman
#54251
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Nils Bergman, is a Swedish specialist in perinatal neuroscience and a promoter of skin-to-skin contact between a mother and newborn. Background Bergman was born in Sweden but grew up in Zimbabwe, and then moved to Cape Town, South Africa, where he received his medical degree at the University of Cape Town, followed by a Masters in Public Health at the University of the Western Cape and a doctoral dissertation on scorpion stings. He returned to Zimbabwe in the 1980s as a mission doctor, and started practising what is now known as Kangaroo Mother Care on babies born prematurely.
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Christine Janis
#70148
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Christine Marie Janis is a British palaeontologist who specialises in mammals. She is currently based at the University of Bristol. Background Janis earned a bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences and Zoology from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in Vertebrate Paleontology from Harvard University. She has held positions as a researcher and lecturer at Oregon State University, Cambridge, the Field Museum of Natural History in the University of Chicago, the University of Bristol, and Brown University.
Go to Profile#4692
Elizabeth A. Craig
#82396
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Elizabeth A. Craig is a Steenbock Professor of Microbial Science and faculty member in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1998. Research in her laboratory concentrates on the folding and remodeling of proteins in the cell via molecular chaperones.
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Cang Hui
#54412
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Cang Hui is a mathematical ecologist at Stellenbosch University. His research interests are proposing models and theories for explaining emerging patterns of biodiversity, networks and adaptive traits in ecology and evolution.
Go to Profile#4694
Stephen E. Harding
#64572
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Stephen E. Harding is a British biochemist specialising in biomolecular hydrodynamics. Harding is currently Professor of Applied Biochemistry at the University of Nottingham, has been the Director of the National Centre of Macromolecular Hydrodynamics since its foundation in 1987 and is a member of the Centre for the Study of the Viking Age.
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Floyd E. Romesberg
#76937
Overall Influence
Floyd E. Romesberg is an American biotechnologist, biochemist, and geneticist formerly at Scripps Research in San Diego, California. He is known for leading the team that created the first Unnatural Base Pair , thus expanding the genetic alphabet of four letters to six in 2012, the first semi-synthetic organism in 2014, and the first functional semi-synthetic organism that can reproduce its genetic material in successive offspring, in 2017. He left Scripps after a Title IX investigation.
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Herbert Boyer
#76455
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Herbert Wayne "Herb" Boyer is an American biotechnologist, researcher and entrepreneur in biotechnology. Along with Stanley N. Cohen and Paul Berg, he discovered a method to coax bacteria into producing foreign proteins, which aided in jump-starting the field of genetic engineering.
Go to Profile#4697
James V. Haxby
#76898
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
James Van Loan Haxby is an American neuroscientist. He currently is a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College and was the Director for the Dartmouth Center for Cognitive Neuroscience from 2008 to 2021. He is best known for his work on face perception and applications of machine learning in functional neuroimaging.
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Robert Pollack
#39115
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Robert Elliot Pollack is an American biologist whose interests cross many academic lines. He grew up in Brooklyn, attended public schools, and majored in physics at Columbia University, where he graduated from the College in 1961. He received a PhD in Biological Sciences from Brandeis University in 1966, and subsequently was a postdoctoral Fellow in Pathology with Howard Green at NYU Medical center, and at the Weizmann Institute in Israel with Ernest Winocour. He was then recruited to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory by James Watson to establish a research program on reversion of cancer cells. He...
Go to Profile#4699
Denis Anthony Mitchison
#97380
Overall Influence
#4700
Asya Rolls
#45236
Overall Influence
Asya Rolls is an Israeli psychoneuroimmunologist and International Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and a Professor at the Immunology and Center of Neuroscience at Technion within the Israel Institute of Technology. Rolls leads a lab that explores how the nervous system affects immune responses and thus physical health. Her recent work has highlighted how the brain's reward system is implicated in the placebo response and how brain-immune interactions can be harnessed to find and destroy tumors.
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