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,
#4701
A. V. Apkarian
#51544
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Apkar Vania Apkarian is a professor of physiology, anesthesiology, and physical medicine and rehabilitation at Northwestern University in the Feinberg School of Medicine. He has been a pioneer in the use of Magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study the neurochemistry of the brain and the development of novel analytical approaches to studying consciousness, including the first demonstration of the brain's small-world network properties using fMRI. In 2008, Dr. Apkarian proposed the theory that chronic pain is a form of emotional learning, which popularized the study of reward learning within the pain research field.
Go to Profile#4702
Mark Schnitzer
#59560
Overall Influence
Mark Schnitzer is a Professor jointly in the Biology and Applied Physics departments at Stanford University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is a recipient of a Paul Allen grant. His current research focuses on techniques for imaging individual neurons in vivo, including using fluorescent imaging and highly parallel processing techniques. In 2003, he was named to the MIT Technology Review's "TR100" list of young innovators.
Go to Profile#4703
Robert Chinnock
#88337
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Robert James Chinnock is a New Zealand-born Australian botanist who worked at the State Herbarium of South Australia as a senior biologist. He retired in 2008 but still works as an honorary research associate.
Go to Profile#4704
Xinnian Dong
#87615
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Xinnian Dong is a Chinese-American biologist who is the current Arts and Sciences Professor of Biology in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Duke University, United States. She is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#4705
Michael Antonio Savageau
#81879
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Michael A. Savageau is a Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics and Biomedical Engineering at The University of California, Davis. He was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2013 for application of systems engineering concepts to molecular biology.
Go to Profile#4706
Vinod Menon
#97457
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#4707
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
#54612
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, and conservation strategist. She is the founder and president of Ocean Collectiv, a consulting firm that helps find ocean "conservation solutions grounded in social justice", and the founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for climate change and ocean conservation policy in coastal cities.
Go to Profile#4708
Zoltan Nusser
#91032
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Zoltan Nusser is a physiologist. He was awarded the Lieben Prize in 2004. He graduated from the University of Budapest, in 1992 and received his Ph.D. in Physiology from Oxford University in 1995. He works at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Budapest since 2000.
Go to Profile#4709
Herman Phaff
#85709
Overall Influence
1913 - 2001 (88 years)
Herman Jan Phaff was a scientist who specialised in yeast ecology. He was born in the Netherlands before moving to California at age of 26. He was active in Californian universities until his death. During his career he accumulated thousands of strainss of yeast from the wild, and described 60 new taxa of yeast.
Go to Profile#4710
Leonard R. Johnson
#97526
Overall Influence
#4711
Julia Levy
#61578
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Julia Levy is a Canadian microbiologist, immunologist, educator and entrepreneur. Early life and education The daughter of Guillaume Albert and Dorothy Frances Coppens, she was born Julia Coppens in Singapore. In 1940, her father sent her mother and his two daughters from their home in Indonesia to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he joined them at the end of World War II after he was released from a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Her early education was in Canada. She studied immunology and bacteriology at the University of British Columbia, earning a BA in 1955. Levy received a PhD in experimental pathology from the University of London in 1958.
Go to Profile#4712
Richard Thompson
#37330
Overall Influence
Richard Charles Thompson is a marine biologist who researches marine litter. At the University of Plymouth he is director of the Marine Institute; professor of Marine Biology; and leads the International Marine Litter Research Unit. Thompson coined the term "microplastics" in 2004.
Go to Profile#4713
John Julian Fung
#97547
Overall Influence
#4714
Richard Smeyne
#40436
Overall Influence
Richard Jay Smeyne is a neuroscientist who is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Thomas Jefferson University, where he is also Director of the Jefferson Comprehensive Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorder Center at the Vickie and Jack Farber Institute for Neuroscience. His research is focused on the cell biology of Parkinson's disease, as well as neuroprotection.
Go to Profile#4715
Marco Rescigno
#97563
Overall Influence
#4716
Cao Xuetao
#89815
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Cao Xuetao is a Chinese immunologist who formerly served as president of Nankai University from 2018 to 2022. Biography Cao was born in Jinan, Shandong, China on July 19, 1964. In September 1981 he was accepted to the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai, where he received his doctorate in medicine in 1986 and completed his post-graduate studies in immunology in 1990. After graduation, he was a lecturer and then professor at the Second Military Medical University, as one of the youngest medical professors at that time. He also served as chairman of the Department , Director of the Institute of Immunology and Vice President of the University .
Go to Profile#4717
Charles Congden Carpenter
#77063
Overall Influence
1921 - 2016 (95 years)
Charles Congden Carpenter was an eminent naturalist and herpetologist who has won numerous awards for excellence as an educator, researcher, and communicator. Education Carpenter received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1943 from Northern Michigan College of Education, now Northern Michigan University, in Marquette, Michigan. He took a U.S. Army Specialized Training Program at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, 1943-1944; at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California in 1944; and at Wayne University College of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan in 1945. He earned his Master of Scienc...
Go to Profile#4718
John Pappenheimer
#88037
Overall Influence
1915 - 2007 (92 years)
John Richard Pappenheimer was the George Higginson Professor of Physiology at Harvard University and the thirty-seventh president of the American Physiological Society from 1964 until 1965. He contributed to a wide range of disciplines within physiology: capillary permeability, respiratory physiology, blood-brain-CSF transport, the neurochemical aspects of sleep, and most recently to the understanding of the absorption of sugars and amino acids in the intestine.
Go to Profile#4719
Raymond Specht
#59010
Overall Influence
1924 - 2021 (97 years)
Raymond Louis Specht was an Australian plant ecologist, conservationist and academic, who participated in the Arnhem Land Scientific Expedition of 1948. Early life Raymond Louis Specht was born in 1924 in Adelaide, South Australia to Louis and Harriet Specht. He attended Richmond Primary School and Adelaide High School, finishing high school as dux in 1941. Specht intended to pursue teaching as a career. In 1942 he was a student teacher in physics, chemistry and mathematics at Riverton High School.
Go to Profile#4720
Martin Theodore Orne
#13809
Overall Influence
1927 - 2000 (73 years)
Martin Theodore Orne was a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Orne is best known for his pioneering research into demand characteristics, illustrating the weakness of informing participants that they are taking part in a psychology experiment and yet expecting them to act normally. He was well known as a researcher in the field of hypnosis and is also noted for his involvement with the poet Anne Sexton, and with the trials of Patty Hearst and Kenneth Bianchi.
Go to Profile#4721
Lorena S. Beese
#68818
Overall Influence
Lorena Beese is a James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry and Duke Cancer Institute Member. Her research involves structural mechanisms underlying DNA replication and repair, neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, and microbial pathogenesis; X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy; structure-based drug design; protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interactions, enzyme mechanisms, chemical biology, protein structure and function.
Go to Profile#4722
George Mackaness
#93856
Overall Influence
1922 - 2007 (85 years)
George Bellamy Mackaness was an Australian professor of microbiology, immunologist, writer and administrator, who researched and described the life history of the macrophage. He showed that by infecting mice with intracellular bacteria, macrophages could be activated to attack other bacteria, triggering further research on "macrophage activation", a term he has come to be associated with.
Go to Profile#4723
Gavin Sherlock
#83493
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Gavin Sherlock is an English-American professor of genetics at Stanford University. Research Sherlock obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in genetics in 1991 from the University of Manchester, where he also earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology three years later.
Go to Profile#4724
Harry Frederick Recher
#67695
Overall Influence
Emeritus Professor Harry Frederick Recher RZS AM is an Australian ecologist, ornithologist and advocate for conservation. Recher grew up in the United States of America. He studied at the State University of New York College of Forestry and received his B.S. in 1959 from Syracuse University. At Stanford University, ecologist Paul Ehrlich, supervised his PhD on migratory shorebirds that was awarded in 1964. Ehrlich became a lifelong friend and mentor to Recher; also sharing his commitment to a strong sense of social responsibility of science. Recher held an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University.
Go to Profile#4725
Bruce Baden Collette
#54450
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Bruce Baden Collette is an American ichthyologist. Biography He was born on March 13, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. He is the son of Raymond Hill Collette and Agnes Hellen Collette. Publications The diversity of fishes : biology, evolution, and ecology ; Malden : Blackwell science, cop. 2009.Results of the Tektite Program: ecology of coral reef fishes ; Natural History Museum, Los Angeles County, 1972.
Go to Profile#4726
Robert K. Selander
#97685
Overall Influence
#4727
Nicole Webster
#52588
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Nicole Webster is an Australian marine scientist who is Chief Scientist for the Australian Antarctic Division. Early life Nicole Webster gained an undergraduate degree and PhD in marine biology at James Cook University. Professor Webster's research discovered that sponge-microbial associations are fairly uniform throughout large geographic zones and highlighted the specificity of this partnership. She also discovered that the breakdown of this symbiosis may be a good indicator of environmental stress.
Go to Profile#4728
Julie McElrath
#54118
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
M. Juliana “Julie” McElrath is a senior vice president and director of the vaccine and infection disease division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the principal investigator of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network Laboratory Center in Seattle, Washington. She is also a professor at the University of Washington.
Go to Profile#4729
Peter Nick
#72549
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Peter Nick is a German molecular biologist, and head of Molecular Cell Biology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology , and long-standing Academic Dean for Chemistry und Biology, He was co-initiator of the Forum for Critical Transdisciplinary Studies and recipient of the State Teaching Award of Baden-Württemberg in 2015.
Go to Profile#4730
Wafik El-Deiry
#26552
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Wafik El-Deiry is an American physician and cancer researcher who is the Associate Dean for Oncologic Sciences at the Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University, Director of the Cancer Center at Brown University, and the Director of the Joint Program in Cancer Biology at Brown University and its affiliated hospitals. He was previously deputy director of Translational Research at Fox Chase Cancer Center, where he was also co-Leader of the Molecular Therapeutics Program.
Go to Profile#4731
David A. Sinclair
#79478
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
David Andrew Sinclair is an Australian-American biologist and academic known for his research on aging and epigenetics. Sinclair is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and is the co-director of its Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research. He is the president of the non-profit Academy for Health & Lifespan Research and an officer of the Order of Australia .
Go to Profile#4732
Needhi Bhalla
#77927
Overall Influence
Needhi Bhalla is an American biologist. She researches mitosis and meiosis in Caenorhabditis elegans. Bhalla is a professor at University of California, Santa Cruz. Early life and education Needhi Bhalla was raised on the southern shore of Long Island near Queens. She was born to Indian parents in Khatri family who emigrated to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s for higher education opportunities. Bhalla's mother is a nutritionist and her father, a United States Air Force engineer.
Go to Profile#4733
Margaret Vaughan
#97785
Overall Influence
#4734
Tony Charman
#97789
Overall Influence
#4735
Hermann Esterbauer
#97790
Overall Influence
#4736
Robert K. Mortimer
#95305
Overall Influence
1927 - 2007 (80 years)
Robert Mortimer was an American molecular biologist who was a pioneer of introducing single-celled yeasts as a model organism to study the operation of genes and chromosomes. Mortimer was a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. His service to the field was recognized with the George W. Beadle Award in 2002.
Go to Profile#4737
Steve Ormerod
#81487
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Stephen "Steve" J. Ormerod FCIEEM , is a professor of ecology and former Chair of the Council of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds , Europe's largest wildlife conservation charity. Biography Ormerod grew up in Burnley, East Lancashire, England.
Go to Profile#4738
Philippe Froguel
#97811
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#4739
Endre Alexander Balazs
#45720
Overall Influence
1920 - 2015 (95 years)
Endre Alexander Balazs was a Hungarian physician and inventor who transformed a natural lubricant into a palliative for arthritic knees. He devoted seven decades to exploring the therapeutic potential of hyaluronic acid. He was inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame in 2012.
Go to Profile#4740
Nick Goldman
#74025
Overall Influence
Nicholas Goldman is a group leader and senior scientist at the European Bioinformatics Institute , located on the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, England. He began working at the EBI in 2002, and became a senior scientist there in 2009. His group's research focuses on evolutionary genetics and genomics. He and his EBI colleague Ewan Birney, along with other researchers, developed a tool for DNA digital data storage, on which they successfully encoded all the sonnets of William Shakespeare, Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, a PDF of the 1953 paper "Molecu...
Go to Profile#4741
Harren Jhoti
#76379
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Harren Jhoti is an Indian-born British structural biologist whose main interest has been rational drug design and discovery. He is president and chief executive officer of biotechnology company Astex Pharmaceuticals which is located in Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#4742
Brendan Arnold Maher
#97845
Overall Influence
#4743
Hugh Iltis
#72356
Overall Influence
1925 - 2016 (91 years)
Hugh Iltis was a professor of botany and director of the herbarium at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While he is most noted as a scientist for his role in the discovery of perennial teosinte , a wild diploid relative of modern maize , he is also remembered as an outspoken environmental conservationist.
Go to Profile#4744
Richard Thomas
#37320
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
John Paul Richard Thomas is an American taxonomist and systematist, and retired professor of herpetology and evolution at University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras . He described several species new to science, mostly amphibians and reptiles, from throughout the Caribbean islands including the common coquí , the national animal of Puerto Rico.
Go to Profile#4745
Prosanta Chakrabarty
#95038
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Prosanta Chakrabarty is an American ichthyologist and professor of ichthyology, evolution and systematics at Louisiana State University. He studied at McGill University where he received a bachelor of science in Applied Zoology and at the University of Michigan where he obtained his PhD in Ecology and Evolution. Among other professional positions he was a Program Director for the National Science Foundation and is currently the President-Elect of the American Society of Ichthyologist and Herpetologist. He was named a TED Fellow in 2016, and a TED Senior Fellow in 2018. He was named an Elected...
Go to Profile#4746
Frantz Fanon
#97927
Overall Influence
#4747
Ernest M. Wright
#92867
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Ernest Marshall Wright FRS is an Irish-born American physiologist. He is primarily known for his work on the mechanisms of glucose-sodium co-transporters in intestinal and other tissues in humans and animals.
Go to Profile#4748
François M. M. Morel
#76359
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
François M. M. Morel is a French-American biogeochemist. He is known for his research on ocean acidification, mercury pollution, the only known cadmium metalloenzyme, and the interactions between trace metals and microorganisms.
Go to Profile#4749
Jessica Kissinger
#44405
Overall Influence
Jessica Kissinger is a Distinguished Research Professor at the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia and director of the Institute of Bioinformatics. Her research focus is on the evolution, assembly and data curation of protozoan parasite genomes, particularly Cryptosporidium, Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium.
Go to Profile#4750
Kuniyoshi Sakai
#45414
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
is an associate professor at the University of Tokyo. He was born in Tokyo, Japan and is of Japanese nationality. Most of the research that Kuniyoshi conducts focuses on neurobiology. History Kuniyoshi has worked at many institutes. Following completion of his PhD, he began working as a research associate at The University of Tokyo. Three years following this he moved to Boston, Massachusetts for two years. His first year he worked at Harvard as a research fellow in the Department of Radiology. The second year he was a working fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1997 Kuni...
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