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).

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List of the most influential people in Philosophy,

#11451

David Geller

David Geller
#86022
Overall Influence
Dr. David Geller is the Richard L. Simmons Professor of Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and co-director of the UPMC Liver Cancer Center. As a hepatobiliary Surgical Oncologist, his clinical interests center on the evaluation and management of patients with liver cancer. He has pioneered laparoscopic liver resections, and has performed more than 300 of these cases. Most of these patients are discharged home on the second post-operative day with four to five band-aid-sized incisions. He also specializes in performing laparoscopic radiofrequency ablations of liver tumors.
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#11452

Morio Kasai

#21256
Overall Influence
1922 - 2008 (86 years)
Morio Kasai was a Japanese surgeon who had a strong interest in pediatric surgery. While Kasai went into practice at a time when pediatric surgery was not an established subspecialty, much of his clinical and research work was related to the surgical care of children. He is best known for devising a surgical procedure, the hepatoportoenterostomy, to address a life-threatening birth defect known as biliary atresia. The modern form of the operation is still known as the Kasai procedure.
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#11453

Thom Andersen

Thom Andersen
#97748
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Thom Andersen is an American filmmaker, film critic, and teacher best known for his works of experimental film, including his 1975 film Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer and the 2003 essay film Los Angeles Plays Itself.
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#11454

Charlotta Pisinger

#176717
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Charlotta Holm Pisinger is a Danish medical doctor, an expert on tobacco-related health issues, and the first Danish professor in tobacco prevention, at the University of Copenhagen. Early life Charlotta Pisinger was born on 19 December 1960, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She earned a master's degree in 1988, a PhD in 2004, and an MPH in 2007, all from the University of Copenhagen.
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#11455

Abdulaziz bin Mohieddin Khoja

#30060
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Abdulaziz bin Mohieddin Khoja is a former Saudi ambassador and the minister of culture and information between 2009 and 2014. Early life and education Khoja was born in Mecca in 1940. He obtained a bachelor of science degree from King Saud University. Then he earned a master of science degree in organic chemistry in Birmingham University in 1967. He also holds a PhD in organic chemistry at Birmingham University in 1969.
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#11456

Diether de la Motte

#127718
Overall Influence
1928 - 2010 (82 years)
Diether de la Motte was a German musician, composer, music theorist, music critic and academic teacher. Life Born in Bonn, de la Motte studied at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold from 1947 to 1950, composition with , choral conducting with Kurt Thomas, and piano. From 1950 to 1959 he was a lecturer for composition, theory of form and piano at the Düsseldorf Kirchenmusikschule. From 1955, he wrote music reviews for the Rheinische Post. From 1959 to 1962, he worked as an editor at Schott Musikverlag in Mainz. He took courses at Darmstädter Ferienkurse, with Ernst Krenek, among others.
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#11457

David Penington

#35705
Overall Influence
1930 - 2023 (93 years)
David Geoffrey Penington was an Australian doctor, academic, Vice-Chancellor and director. Biography Penington was educated at Carey Grammar, and later Scotch College, Melbourne . He obtained BM.Bch and later Doctorate in Medicine at the University of Oxford and a Doctorate in Laws at the University of Melbourne. He initially had a career in medicine in the United Kingdom at the London Hospital between 1957 and 1967, and also in Harley Street until 1967. He was then Professor of Medicine from 1970 to 1987 at the University of Melbourne, and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine between 1978 and 1985.
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#11458

David Sterritt

David Sterritt
#95144
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
David Sterritt is a film critic, author and scholar. He is most notable for his work on Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard, and his many years as the Film Critic for The Christian Science Monitor, where, from 1968 until his retirement in 2005, he championed avant garde cinema, theater and music. He has a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University and is the Chairman of the National Society of Film Critics.
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#11459

John Fraser

#54384
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
John Anderson Fraser is a Canadian journalist, writer and academic. He served as Master of Massey College in the University of Toronto from 1995 until his retirement in June 2014. He is currently the executive chair of the National NewsMedia Council of Canada.
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#11460

Francis Avery Jones

#60953
Overall Influence
1910 - 1998 (88 years)
Sir Francis Avery Jones CBE FRCP MRCS was a Welsh physician and gastroenterologist. He was born in Briton Ferry, Carmarthenshire, Wales but educated at the Sir John Leman High School, Beccles, Suffolk and at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School, where he qualified in medicine in 1934.
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#11461

Francesco Lo-Coco

#181937
Overall Influence
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#11462

Amy Bower

#36329
Overall Influence
Amy Bower is an American physical oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She is known for her research on ocean circulation and for being one of the few blind oceanographers. Career Bower received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics at Tufts University and her PhD in Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. Bower is a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She was the chair of the Physical Oceanography Department from 2018 to 2022. She attended Tufts University as an undergraduate and the University of Rhode Island fo...
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#11463

Dimie Ogoina

#124876
Overall Influence
Dimie Ogoina is a Nigerian infectious disease physician-scientist. He is a professor of medicine at the Niger Delta University and chief medical director at its teaching hospital. He is president of the Nigerian Infectious Diseases Society.
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#11464

Robert H. Carter

#175050
Overall Influence
Robert H. Carter is an American rheumatologist and physician-scientist serving as the deputy director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases since 2008. He was the acting director of NIAMS from December 2018 until February 2021.
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#11465

Richard Ritsing

#180677
Overall Influence
1903 - 1994 (91 years)
Richard Ritsing is an Estonian composer, choral conductor. He composed mainly a cappella choral music. Ritsing was born in Räpina. In 1929 he graduated from Tartu University in philosophy. He has studied several musical disciplines at Tartu Music School.
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#11466

David E. R. Sutherland

#181966
Overall Influence
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#11467

Dominic Pettman

#89096
Overall Influence
Dominic Pettman is a cultural theorist and author. He is University Professor of Media and New Humanities at The New School, teaching within the Culture and Media program at Eugene Lang College and also the Liberal Studies Program at the New School for Social Research . He has held previous positions at the University of Melbourne, the University of Geneva, and the University of Amsterdam. Pettman's work combines cultural studies, critical media studies, and philosophical approaches concerning topics ranging from new media, popular culture, affect theory, sound studies, and animal studies.
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#11468

Hans-Günther Thalheim

#78553
Overall Influence
1924 - 2018 (94 years)
Hans-Günther Thalheim was a German professor of German language and linguistics and of Literary sciences. He was also a writer and literary editor. Life Thalheim was born in Chemnitz, in the southern part of what was then central Germany. His father was a public official. He successfully undertook his school final exams in 1943 and in 1943/44 performed substitute national service by working as a teacher in Carinthia. He also undertook a period of study involving German literature, history pedagogy and philosophy at Freiburg university in the south-west of the country, where his teache...
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#11469

Peter Staats

#37224
Overall Influence
Peter Sean Staats is an American physician, specializing in interventional pain medicine. He is the founder of the Division of Pain Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and was the Division's chief for nearly a decade. He is a past president of the North American Neuromodulation Society, the New Jersey Society of Interventional Pain Medicine,the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians the World Institute of Pain , The Southern Pain Society.
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#11470

Daniel Yankelovich

#20891
Overall Influence
1924 - 2017 (93 years)
Daniel Yankelovich was an American public opinion analyst and social scientist. Education and career After attending Boston Latin School, Yankelovich graduated from Harvard University in 1946 and 1950 before completing postgraduate studies at the Sorbonne in France. As a psychology professor he has taught at New York University and The New School for Social Research. In 1996 he served as Senior Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
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#11471

Ken Kirkwood

#179680
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Kenneth William Kirkwood is a Canadian bioethicist. He is Professor of Applied Health Ethics at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. He specializes in questions of professional ethical standards, enhancement of human physiological and neurological traits, and sociological-philosophical questions of health research.
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#11472

Nikolai Levashov

#25960
Overall Influence
1961 - 2012 (51 years)
Nicolai or Nikolai Levashov was a Russian occultist and psychic healer who wrote several books on life in the universe, Slavic history, the origin of mankind on Earth and other topics. From 1991 to 2005 he was known in the United States for several causes célèbres involving his patients. One of his books is classified as antisemitic and extreme and banned in Russia. He was a leader of a public organisation "Renaissance. The Golden Age" which is considered a destructive cult by the Russian Orthodox Church.
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#11473

Bill Cassidy

#55288
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
William Morgan Cassidy is an American physician and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Louisiana, a seat he has held since 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the Louisiana State Senate from 2006 to 2009 and in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2009 to 2015.
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#11474

Marcello Costa

Marcello Costa
#94959
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Marcello Costa is an Italian-born Australian medical researcher, academic, and public health advocate. He specializes in the structure and functions of the enteric nervous system. He taught in Turin, Melbourne, and Helsinki before moving to Adelaide in 1975 where he was a foundation lecturer at the Flinders Medical School, building the new discipline of neuroscience at the college. He was at Flinders University where he held the title of Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Neurophysiology in the Department of Physiology. In 2021 Marcello retired from his position at Flinders Univers...
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#11475

Sister Vajirā

#110604
Overall Influence
1928 - 1991 (63 years)
Sister Vajirā was a dasa sil mata, a Buddhist ten precept-holder nun in Sri Lanka. Lay life Hannelore was looking for religious meanings and in early summer 1949 she came across the teachings of the Buddha. Hannelore was so impressed that she came to the seminary group of Debes, one of the most prominent lay Theravada teachers at that time, and took part in her first “weeks of investigation” in an Adult Education College in the Lüneburger Heide area. She worked as a private teacher. In June 1954 the Sinhalese monk Ven. Nārada turned up in Hamburg and Hannelore took the opportunity to request to go to Ceylon and become a nun.
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#11476

David Whetham

#173096
Overall Influence
David Glenn Whetham is Professor of Ethics and the Military Profession in the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London. His teaching and research over the last ten years has been primarily focused on understanding the impact of technology on the normative environment, and improving the provision of military ethics education and training both in the UK and internationally.
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#11477

Julie Panepinto

#167203
Overall Influence
Julie Ann Panepinto is an American pediatric hematologist-oncologist and physician-scientist. She specializes in health outcomes research and sickle cell disease. Panepinto became the acting director of the division of blood diseases and resources at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in 2022. She was a professor of pediatrics and hematology at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
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#11478

Deborah Cook

#166051
Overall Influence
1954 - 2020 (66 years)
Deborah Cook was a Canadian philosopher specializing in phenomenology, existentialism, critical theory, and post-structuralism. Cook was the author of several books and numerous articles, with special emphasis on the work of Theodor W. Adorno.
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#11479

Kamran Bagheri Lankarani

#25768
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Kamran Bagheri Lankarani is an Iranian physician and politician who was Minister of Health and Medical Education from 2005 until 2009. Born in 1965, he finished medical school at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, and attained an advanced fellowship degree in Medicine from the same university. He specializes in gastroenterology.
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#11480

Molly Marples

#103611
Overall Influence
1908 - 1998 (90 years)
Mary Joyce Marples was a microbial ecologist/medical mycologist who spent most of her career conducting research and teaching at the University of Otago in New Zealand from her appointment in 1946 until her retirement in 1967. She is noted as an early proponent of the theory that skin provides an ecosystem that supports a diversity of microorganisms.
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#11481

Kimmie Ng

#174751
Overall Influence
Kimmie Ng is a physician at Dana–Farber Cancer Institute who is known for her work on colorectal cancer in young patients. Education and career Ng has an undergraduate degree from Yale University and earned her M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001. Subsequently she trained at the University of California, San Francisco and Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. In 2007, she received a masters in public health from Harvard University. As of 2021, Ng is a physician at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and a professor at Harvard Medical School. Ng is the director of Dana-Farber's Young-Onset C...
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#11482

Moira Whyte

#69404
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Moira Katherine Brigid Whyte FERS is a Scottish physician and medical researcher who is the Sir John Crofton Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. She is the Director the Medical Research Council Centre for Inflammation Research and is Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Whyte is also a trustee of Cancer Research UK.
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#11483

Victoria Lemieux

#131763
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Victoria Louise Lemieux is a Canadian specialist in records management and Associate Professor of Archival Studies at the University of British Columbia . She is known for her research into financial information management, risk mitigation including using blockchain technology in risk reduction.
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#11484

Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Kathleen de la Peña McCook
#79683
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Kathleen de la Peña McCook is a library scholar, librarian, and activist. Much of her work centers around social justice, human rights, First Amendment issues, and the freedom of information. McCook has been active in a number of professional organizations within the field of librarianship. She was highly involved in the American Library Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship. She was the recipient of their 2016 Elizabeth Martinez Lifetime Achievement Award. She is a past president of the Association for Library and Information Science Education and the recipient of th...
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#11485

Glenn Kenny

#71567
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Glenn Kenny is an American film critic and journalist. He writes for The New York Times and RogerEbert.com. Biography Kenny attended William Paterson University, where he majored in English literature.
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#11486

Alma Dawson

Alma Dawson
#30255
Overall Influence
Alma Dawson is an American scholar of librarianship. She retired as Russell B. Long Professor at the School of Library & Information Science, Louisiana State University in 2014 and was awarded Emeritus status in 2015. In 2019 Dr. Dawson was honored with the Essae Martha Culver Distinguished Service Award from the Louisiana Library Association which honors a librarian whose professional service and achievements, whose leadership in Louisiana association work, and whose lifetime accomplishments in a field of librarianship within the state merit recognition of particular value to Louisiana librar...
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#11487

Lisa Frenkel

#181255
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Lisa M. Frenkel is an American pediatrician currently Professor at University of Washington and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Education She earned her B.A. at University of Kansas from 1973–77 and her M.D. at University of Kansas Medical Center from 1977-81.
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#11488

Michael Maul

#115860
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Michael Maul is a German musicologist noted for his work on Johann Sebastian Bach. Maul was born in Leipzig, and is still based in the city, although his work at the Bach Archive has involved travel to archives and libraries across Germany in search of new sources relating to Bach. He is also artistic director of Leipzig's annual Bach festival.
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#11489

Dietrich Borchardt

#138091
Overall Influence
1916 - 1997 (81 years)
Dietrich Hans Borchardt was an Australian librarian and bibliographer. Career Born in Hanover, Germany, to Jewish parents, Borchardt escaped Nazism via Italy and emigrated to New Zealand. There he studied at Victoria University, Wellington, and graduated with a BA in 1944 and an MA in 1947. He gained a library diploma from the New Zealand Library School.
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#11490

R Adams Cowley

R Adams Cowley
#9681
Overall Influence
1917 - 1991 (74 years)
R Adams Cowley was an American surgeon considered a pioneer in emergency medicine and the treatment of shock trauma. Called the "Father of Trauma Medicine", he was the founder of the United States' first trauma center at the University of Maryland in 1958, after the United States army awarded him $100,000 to study shock in people—the first award of its kind in the United States. The trauma unit at first consisted of two beds, and was later expanded to four beds. Many people called the four-bed unit the "death lab." Cowley was the creator of the "Golden Hour" concept, the period of 60 minutes or less following injury when immediate definitive care is crucial to a trauma patient's survival.
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#11491

Bernard Sellato

Bernard Sellato
#66598
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Bernard Sellato was born in 1951, holds an M.Sc. in Geology from ENSG in Nancy, France, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the EHESS in Paris. He spent many years in Kalimantan researching history, languages and cultures.
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#11492

La Ferne Price

La Ferne Price
#130382
Overall Influence
1926 - 2016 (90 years)
La Ferne Ellis Price was an infielder and pitcher who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the 1944 season. Price batted and threw right handed. After entering the league, she started to be known simply as 'Ferne', a moniker that she proudly used throughout her life.
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#11493

Werner Breig

#124983
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Werner Breig is a German musicologist and music publisher. Life Born in Zwickau, Breig studied Protestant sacred music at the Spandauer Kirchenmusikschule from 1950 and musicology, art history and library science at the universities University of Erlangen–Nuremberg and Hamburg from 1955. In 1962 he received his doctorate as D. Phil. at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg with a dissertation on Heinrich Scheidemann. He worked as research assistant at the musicological seminar of the University of Freiburg and received a scholarship from the German Research Foundation for further studies. In 1973 he received his habilitation in Freiburg im Breisgau.
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#11494

Jonny Kim

Jonny Kim
#15960
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Jonathan Yong Kim , is an American U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, former SEAL, naval aviator, physician, and NASA astronaut. Born and raised in California, Kim enlisted in the U.S. Navy in the early 2000s before earning a Silver Star and his commission. While a U.S. sailor, Kim also received his Bachelor of Arts in mathematics with distinction, his Doctor of Medicine, and an acceptance to NASA Astronaut Group 22 in 2017. He completed his astronaut training in 2020 and was awaiting a flight assignment with the Artemis program .
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#11495

Maria Bitner-Glindzicz

#173996
Overall Influence
1963 - 2018 (55 years)
Maria Bitner-Glindzicz was a British medical doctor, honorary consultant in clinical genetics at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and a professor of human and molecular genetics at the UCL Institute of Child Health. The hospital described her work as relating to the "genetic causes of deafness in children and therapies that she hoped would one day restore vision." She researched Norrie disease and Usher syndrome, working with charities including Sparks and the Norrie Disease Foundation, and was one of the first colleagues involved in the 100,000 Genomes Project at Genomics England.
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#11496

Roger W. Robinson

#67908
Overall Influence
1909 - 2010 (101 years)
Roger W. Robinson was an American cardiologist who served as chief of cardiology and chief of medicine at Memorial Hospital, Worcester, MA. He was the director of the Lipid Research Laboratory and served as a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is considered a pioneer in the field of lipid and atherosclerosis research.
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#11497

Elizabeth Iorns

#72976
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Elizabeth Jane Iorns is a New Zealand scientist, entrepreneur and researcher, and the founder and CEO of Science Exchange, a Silicon Valley startup which operates a platform to allow scientists to outsource their research to scientific institutions such as university facilities or commercial contract research organizations. Science Exchange has received considerable media attention since it first launched in August 2011, particularly following its participation in the Y Combinator incubator program in Summer 2011 and its role in launching the Reproducibility Initiative in Summer 2012. Iorns h...
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#11498

Luc F. Van Gaal

#182226
Overall Influence
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#11499

Katsuma Dan

#31153
Overall Influence
1904 - 1996 (92 years)
Katsuma Dan was a Japanese embryologist and cell biologist. He was born in 1904 in Tokyo, the youngest son of Baron Dan Takuma, president of the Mitsui Gomei Kaisha Corporation. Takuma Dan was educated in the United States, graduating from MIT in 1878. He was one of the first foreign students to be educated at MIT and later, as president of the Japan Steel Works, he initiated and maintained close research ties with The Institute.
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#11500

Rebecca W. Keller

#97096
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Rebecca W. Keller, Ph.D., incorporated Gravitas Publications Inc in 2003 to develop and publish core sciences curriculum under the Real Science-4-Kids imprint. She has authored and published Real Science-4-Kids student texts, teacher manuals, and student laboratory workbooks in chemistry, biology and physics to serve kindergarten through ninth grade, available through mainstream and home school book distributors.
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