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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Ranking

List of the most influential people in Biology,

#4951

Reinhard Dallinger

Reinhard Dallinger

#85478

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Reinhard Dallinger is an Italian-born Austrian zoologist and professor of zoology and ecotoxicology at the University of Innsbruck . He works in the field of biochemistry and physiology of trace element metabolism of invertebrate animals and in the field of environmental toxicology of metals in terrestric and aquatic habitats.

#4952

Paul Bieniasz

#95586

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Paul Darren Bieniasz is a British-American virologist whose main area of research is HIV/AIDS. He is currently a professor of retrovirology at the Rockefeller University. He received the 2015 KT Jeang Retrovirology Prize and the 2010 Eli Lilly and Company Research Award. Bieniasz has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator since 2008.

#4953

Luigi Francesco Agnati

#100044

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

#4954

Jerzy Dzik

#69432

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jerzy Dzik is a Polish paleontologist. He has described many species, genera, and families of conodonts, including the order Ozarkodinida . In 2003, he described the dinosauriform Silesaurus, from the Triassic of Poland.

#4955

Henry Ralph Mahler

#100063

Overall Influence

#4956

Boris Cyrulnik

#14515

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Boris Cyrulnik is a French doctor, ethologist, neurologist, and psychiatrist. As a Jewish child during World War II, he was entrusted to a foster family for his own protection. In 1943 he was taken with adults in a Nazi-led capture in Bordeaux. He avoided detention by hiding for a while in the restrooms and later being hidden from Nazi searches as a farm boy under the name Jean Laborde until the end of the war. Both of his parents were arrested and murdered during World War II. His own survival motivated his career in psychiatry. He studied medicine at the University of Paris. He has written several books of popular science on psychology.

#4957

Susan L. Swain

#95347

Overall Influence

Susan L. Swain is a professor of pathology and former director and president of the Trudeau Institute, NY. She was president of the American Association of Immunologists in 2004/5. Biography Swain was born in Columbus, Ohio. Her father was a professor of mathematics; her mother, a journalist. She attended Oberlin College, majoring in biology, and received her Ph.D. in immunology from Harvard Medical School. In 1976 she took her first academic appointment as lecturer and research biologist at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla. She stayed at UCSD, becoming professor of biology in 1989, until her appointment as director and Edward C.

#4958

Francisco Mago Leccia

Francisco Mago Leccia

#61371

Overall Influence

1931 - 2004 (73 years)

Francisco Mago Leccia was born in Tumeremo, Bolívar State, Venezuela on May 21, 1931 and died in Puerto La Cruz, Anzoátegui State, Venezuela on February 27, 2004. Mago was a distinguished Venezuelan ichthyologist who specialized in electric fish of the rivers and lagoons of South America, particularly of Venezuela. His education was Docent in Biology and Chemistry graduate from the “Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas”, , Master of Sciences from the University of Miami, Florida, U.S.A., Doctor in Sciences from Universidad Central de Venezuela. His Doctoral Thesis was entitled: “Los peces Gymnot...

#4959

Charles Lee Remington

Charles Lee Remington

#53260

Overall Influence

1922 - 2007 (85 years)

Charles Lee Remington was an American entomologist known for studies of butterflies and moths, a Yale University professor, and is considered the father of modern lepidoptery. He established a Periodical Cicada preserve in Hamden, Connecticut. He developed the insect collection at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Among species named in his honor are Agathymus remingtoni and Metajapyx remingtoni, a forcepstail.

#4960

Donald Heath

#100092

Overall Influence

#4961

Richard Gilbert West

#92115

Overall Influence

1926 - 2020 (94 years)

Richard Gilbert West FRS was a British botanist, geologist and palaeontologist. Career He began his career at the age of 18 in 1944 when he joined the Army and spent time in India. On return to England, he went to Clare College, Cambridge in 1948 taking Botany and Geology at Part I. Although being tempted to take Geology for Part II, he decided to study Botany, for which he obtained First Class Honours and the Frank Smart Studentship. As a research student, he was supervised by Harry Godwin, Director of the Subdepartment of Quaternary Research and investigated the now classic study of the stratigraphy and palynology of the Middle Pleistocene interglacial lake deposits at Hoxne, Suffolk.

#4962

Nii Addy

#55357

Overall Influence

Nii Addy is an American neuroscientist who is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. His research considers the neurobiological basis of substance use disorders, depression, and anxiety. He has worked on various initiatives to mitigate tobacco use and addiction.

#4963

Graham Coop

#85828

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Graham Coop is a British-American population geneticist. He is a professor in both the Department of Evolution and Ecology and the Center for Population Biology in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Davis.

#4964

Irwin Sherman

#76515

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Irwin William Sherman was a biology professor emeritus. He taught at University of California, Riverside for 42 years and retired as executive vice chancellor. Sherman is known for his studies of malaria.

#4965

Marta Mirazón Lahr

Marta Mirazón Lahr

#46202

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Dr. Marta Mirazón Lahr is a palaeoanthropologist and Director of the Duckworth Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Academic career Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Mirazon Lahr graduated in Biology from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She later earned a Masters and PhD in Biological Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, following which she was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Clare College. She was then an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biology of University of São Paulo , before returning to Cambridge in 1999 as a lecturer in Biological Anthropology and Fellow of Clare College.

#4966

Austin Mast

#82319

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Austin R. Mast is a research botanist. Born in 1972, he obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2000. He is currently a professor within the Department of Biological Science at Florida State University , and has been director of FSU's Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium since August 2003.

#4967

Kevin Eggan

#50460

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Kevin Eggan is a Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University, known for his work in stem cell research , and as a spokesperson for stem cell research in the United States. He was a 2006 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship . In 2005, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

#4968

Alkes Price

#77025

Overall Influence

Alkes Long Price is an American statistical geneticist. He is Professor of Statistical Genetics in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health , where he also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Biostatistics. In addition, he is an associate member of the Broad Institute's Program in Medical and Population Genetics and a member of the HSPH Program in Quantitative Genomics. In 2017, he received the Outstanding Faculty Mentor of the Year Award from the Harvard School of Public Health.

#4969

Sven Cnattingius

#100164

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

#4970

Eline Slagboom

#75217

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

P. Eline Slagboom is a Dutch biologist specializing in the human familial longevity and ageing. Education Slagboom attended Christelijk Lyceum in Delft, graduating in 1978, before continuing to Leiden University for her Bachelors and Masters degrees in biology, followed by a Ph.D. focusing on Genomic Instability and Aging from the same institution.

#4971

Xavier Mariette

#100179

Overall Influence

#4972

Stacy Jupiter

#49693

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Stacy Jupiter is a marine scientist from Suva, Fiji. She won the MacArthur Fellowship in 2019. According to Newsday, she was the only "overseas" fellow recognized in 2019. Her research focuses primarily on working with the practices of local communities to develop effective strategies that conserve and protect the coastal systems. She performs her work primarily in Melanesia, a Pacific region including Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea.

#4973

Eugene L. Roberts

#100199

Overall Influence

#4974

Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti

#99816

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti is an immunologist and is the Rose Marie Thomas Endowed Chair, Vice Chair of the Department of Immunology, and Member at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. She is also Director of the Center of Excellence in Innate Immunity and Inflammation at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Her research interests include investigating fundamental mechanisms of innate immunity, including inflammasomes and inflammatory cell death, PANoptosis, in infectious and inflammatory disease and cancer.

#4975

Enrique Cadenas

#100239

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

#4976

John Paul Blass

#86220

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

John P. Blass, physician, biochemist and neurochemist, was born on February 21, 1937 in Vienna, Austria, and deceased March 12, 2023 in New York City. Both his parents were physicians; his father, Gustaf Blass, was a prominent Viennese radiologist and his mother, Jolan Wirth Blass, a student of Sigmund Freud, was a psychoanalyst originally from Budapest. The family then moved to Stamford, Connecticut. Both parents practiced psychiatry, Gustaf in a private sanitarium in Stamford and Jolan as a child psychiatrist in New York City and Connecticut. He is survived by his wife, son and two granddaug...

#4977

David M. Gates

#92164

Overall Influence

1921 - 2016 (95 years)

David M. Gates was an American ecologist who sounded early warnings that fossil fuels, fertilizers and pesticides posed a potentially fatal threat to the global environment. Gates was a physicist and ecologist, professor emeritus of biology, University of Michigan. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Michigan.

#4978

Lucilla Poston

#78008

Overall Influence

Lucilla Poston is a physiologist specialising in problems during pregnancy. She is a professor of maternal and fetal health at King's College London. Personal life and education Poston attended Felsted School in 1970, one of the first girls to be educated there after the school became co-educational. She graduated with a degree in physiology from University College, London and was also awarded her doctorate by University of London.

#4979

John A. Church

#60479

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

John Alexander Church is an expert on sea level and its changes. He was co-convening lead author for the chapter on Sea Level in the IPCC Third Assessment Report. He was also a co-convening lead author for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. He is a member of the Joint Scientific Committee of the WCRP. He was a project leader at CSIRO, until 2016. He is currently a professor with the University of New South Wales' Climate Change Research Centre.

#4980

Carmen Lelia Cristóbal

#96891

Overall Influence

1932 - 2019 (87 years)

Carmen Lelia Cristóbal is an Argentine professor of botany at the National University of the Northeast in Corrientes. In 1959, she earned her doctorate degree in botany at the National University of Tucumán. Her specialty was the family Sterculiaceae, and her thesis on the genus Ayenia earned her two prizes: the "Ernesto Padilla" Prize in 1960 from the Miguel Lillo Foundation and the "Cristobal Hicken" Prize in 1961 from the National Academy of Sciences of Argentina.

#4981

Dietmar Schomburg

Dietmar Schomburg

#100297

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

#4982

Victoria Lundblad

Victoria Lundblad

#83989

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Victoria Lundblad is an American geneticist whose work focuses on the genetic control of chromosome behavior in yeast. Many of her discoveries have concerned telomerase, the RNA-containing enzyme that completes the ends of chromosomes. She works at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.

#4983

Karen Duff

#39097

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Karen Elizabeth Keitley Duff is a British scientist known for her work on Alzheimer's disease. Her most notable work focused on the development and characterization of mouse models of Alzheimer's disease amyloid deposition. She became Centre Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute's hub at University College London in spring 2020.

#4984

Vicki Funk

#90353

Overall Influence

1947 - 2019 (72 years)

Vicki Ann Funk was an American botanist and curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, known for her work on members of the composite family including collecting plants in many parts of the world, as well as her synthetic work on phylogenetics and biogeography.

#4985

Samuel Santoro

#69362

Overall Influence

Samuel A. Santoro is an American microbiologist and immunologist, focusing in structure and biology of integrin adhesive receptors for extracellular matrix proteins, currently the Dorothy B. and Theodore R. Austin Professor and Chair at Vanderbilt University.

#4986

Patricia H. Clarke

#78761

Overall Influence

1919 - 2010 (91 years)

Patricia Hannah Clarke FRS was a British biochemist. Education and early life Clarke was born in Pontypridd, South Wales, and was educated at Howell's School, Llandaff, from 1930 to 1937, before studying the Natural Sciences Tripos at Girton College, Cambridge, from 1937 to 1940.

#4987

C. H. Gimingham

#88289

Overall Influence

1923 - 2018 (95 years)

Charles Henry Gimingham was a British botanist at the University of Aberdeen, patron of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, former president of the British Ecological Society, and one of the leading researchers of heathlands and heathers.

#4988

David Colman

#69700

Overall Influence

1949 - 2011 (62 years)

David R. Colman was an American neuroscientist who served as Director of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital at McGill University and McGill University Health Centre until his death in June 2011.

#4989

Steven N. Austad

#67822

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Steven N. Austad is the Protective Life Endowed Chair in Health Aging Research, a Distinguished professor and Chair of the Department of Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. After earning a BA in English literature from UCLA, Austad left academia for a number of years during which among other things, he drove a taxi cab in New York City, worked as a newspaper reporter, and trained lions for television and movies. His interest in biology was awakened by his lion training, and he returned to academics to study biology more formally. He received a BS in biology from California State University, Northridge and his PhD in biology from Purdue University.

#4990

Amir Kassam

#93980

Overall Influence

Amir Kassam, FRSB, OBE, is visiting professor in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development at the University of Reading, and a member of the global forum of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He was made OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2005 for services to tropical agriculture and rural development. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Biology.

#4991

Jonathan D. Cohen

#42613

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Jonathan David Cohen is an American psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist. He is the Robert Bendheim and Lynn Bendheim Thoman Professor in Neuroscience and Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, where he is also the founding co-director of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. He originally joined the faculty of Princeton in 1998, and became the founding director of the Center for the Study of Brain, Mind, and Behavior in 2000. A noted expert on neuroimaging, he played a major role in increasing the use of fMRI scanners in scientific research. He has been a fellow of the Associa...

#4992

Luca Scorrano

#97738

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Luca Scorrano is an Italian biologist and professor of Biochemistry at the University of Padua as well as the former Scientific Director of the Veneto Institute of Molecular Medicine in Italy. He is known for his important contributions to the field of mitochondrial dynamics and the interface between mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum.

#4993

Ralph Riley

#85305

Overall Influence

1924 - 1999 (75 years)

Sir Ralph Riley was a British geneticist. He was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire in 1924 and served in the army during the Second World War. After the war he studied Botany at Sheffield University, followed by a two-year PhD study in genetics.

#4994

Don Northcote

#99812

Overall Influence

1921 - 2004 (83 years)

Donald Henry Northcote, FRS was a 20th-century British academic. Life Northcote was educated at Sir George Monoux Grammar School . He graduated from University of London. He was a Lecturer in Plant Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge; then Reader from 1965 to 1972; and Professor from 1972 to 1989. He was also an Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge.

#4995

Paul Wehrle

#47473

Overall Influence

1921 - 2004 (83 years)

Paul Francis Wehrle was a researcher and physician who helped develop of methods to prevent and treat polio and smallpox. Education Wehrle graduated from the University of Arizona and received his M.D. degree from Tulane University in 1947. He then became acting chairman of the Microbiology Department of the State University of New York Upstate Medical University at Syracuse, New York.

#4996

Norman Myers

#100406

Overall Influence

#4997

Arnold Scheibel

#87757

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

Arnold Bernard Scheibel was an American neuroscientist, professor of psychiatry and neuroanatomy, and the former director of the Brain Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is well known for his research regarding the anatomy of the spinal cord, brain stem, and cerebral cortex. He introduced the concept of modular organization in the nervous system. His Golgi studies of human brain tissue extended the knowledge about the nature of neuronal changes in senile brain disease and in schizophrenia. He demonstrated the correlations between human cognitive activity and s...

#4998

Akira Kobata

#100422

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

#4999

Francisco Xavier Castellanos

#75559

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

F. Xavier Castellanos is a Bolivian nueroscientist who is the director of research at the NYU Child Study Center. His work aims at elucidating the neuroscience of ADHD through structural and functional brain imaging studies, collaborating on molecular genetic studies, and coordinating an interdisciplinary network of translational investigators . Dr. Castellanos chaired the NIH ‘Initial Review Group’ on Developmental Psychopathology and Developmental Disabilities from 2005–2007 and is chairing the revision of the diagnostic criteria for externalizing disorders for the forthcoming edition of DSM-V, projected for 2012.

#5000

Tim Crow

#32730

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Timothy John Crow is a British psychiatrist and researcher from Oxford. Much of his research is related to the causes of schizophrenia. He also has an interest in neurology and the evolutionary theory. He is the Honorary Director of the Prince of Wales International Centre for Research into Schizophrenia and Depression. He qualified at the Royal London Hospital in 1964 and obtained a PhD at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1970. He is a fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Psychiatrists and the Academy of Medical Sciences. Crow was for twenty years Head of the Division of Ps...

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