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 Virology,
#351
Helen McShane
#47574
Overall Influence
Helen Irene McShane is a British infectious disease physician and a professor of vaccinology, in the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford, where she has led the tuberculosis vaccine research group since 2001. She is senior research fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#352
Richard T. Walker
#169872
Overall Influence
#353
Éric A. Cohen
#106938
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Éric A. Cohen is a Canadian molecular virologist whose research is focused on human immunodeficiency virus -host interactions that govern viral replication and persistence. Education and Training Cohen graduated from Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf of Montréal in 1977 with a college diploma in Health Sciences. He received a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from McGill University in 1981 and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Université de Montréal in 1987.
Go to Profile#354
Gary Kobinger
#79436
Overall Influence
Gary P. Kobinger is a Canadian immunologist and virologist who is currently the director at the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas. He has held previous professorships at Université Laval, the University of Manitoba, and the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, he was the chief of the Special Pathogens Unit at the National Microbiology Laboratory of the Public Health Agency of Canada in Winnipeg, Manitoba, for eight years. Kobinger is known for his critical role in the development of both an effective Ebola vaccine and treatment. His work focuses on the developmen...
Go to Profile#355
Felix Dapare Dakora
#94350
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Felix Dapare Dakora, is a Ghanaian plant biologist investigating biological nitrogen fixation at the Tshwane University of Technology in South Africa. He currently serves as President of The African Academy of Sciences for the 2017–2023 terms. Dakora was awarded the UNESCO-Equatorial Guinea International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences and the African Union Kwame Nkrumah Scientific Award. Dakora is a Fellow of the Academy of Science of South Africa.
Go to Profile#356
Jonathan P. Stoye
#112353
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Jonathan Paul Stoye is a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, England. He has made substantial contributions to scientific understanding of the interactions of retroviruses with their hosts.
Go to Profile#357
Kalle Saksela
#151338
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kalle M. Saksela is a Finnish virologist. He has been a professor at University of Helsinki since 2005, where he leads the virology department. Biography and work in 1989 Saksela obtained his MD and PhD from the University of Helsinki under the supervision of Kari Alitalo. In 1989/1990 Saksela was research fellow with Helsinki's department of virology. In 1991 Saksela worked as a postdoctoral fellow with David Baltimore at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then followed him to the Rockefeller University. There he worked as an assistant professor From 1994 to 1996.
Go to Profile#358
Thumbi Ndung'u
#111011
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Thumbi Ndung’u is a Kenyan-born HIV/AIDS researcher. He is the deputy director and a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa. He is Professor of Infectious Diseases in the Division of Immunity and Infection, University College London. He is Professor and Victor Daitz Chair in HIV/TB Research and Scientific Director of the HIV Pathogenesis Programme at the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal. He holds the South African Research Chair in Systems Biology of HIV/AIDS. He is an Adjunct Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H.
Go to Profile#359
Kristian G. Andersen
#92765
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Kristian Andersen is a evolutionary biologist and professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. Andersen obtained a BSc in molecular biology from Aarhus University in 2004, and a PhD in immunology from the University of Cambridge in 2009.
Go to Profile#360
Patricia G. Spear
#133479
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Patricia Gail Spear is an American virologist. She is a professor emeritus of microbiology and immunology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She is best known for her pioneering work studying the herpes simplex virus. Spear is a past president of the American Society for Virology and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#361
Paul Coulthard
#171120
Overall Influence
Paul Coulthard, BDS, MFGDP, MDS, FDSRCS, FDSRCS, PhD, FDSRCPS, FFDTRCS, FDSRCS, FCGDent is a British Academic Surgeon and Scientist. Career Coulthard was appointed Dean of the School of Dentistry at the University of Manchester in 2013. In 2018 he was appointed Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at the University of Manchester and Head of the School of Medical Sciences. This School consisted of the Research Institutes of ‘Cancer Sciences’, ‘Cardiovascular Sciences’, ‘Developmental Biology & Medicine’, ‘Diabetes, Endocrinology & Gastroenterology’, and the ‘Manchester Medical School’ and ‘Manchester Dental School’.
Go to Profile#362
Anna-Lise Williamson
#110269
Overall Influence
Anna-Lise Williamson MASSAf is a Professor of Virology at the University of Cape Town. Williamson obtained her PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1985. Her area of expertise is human papillomavirus, but is also known on an international level for her work in developing vaccines for HIV. These vaccines have been introduce in phase 1 of clinical trial. Williamson has published more than 120 papers.
Go to Profile#363
Helen Y. Chu
#137231
Overall Influence
Helen Y. Chu is an American immunologist who is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Her research considers maternal immunization, with a focus on influenza and respiratory syncytial virus. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chu was the first physician to recognise community transmission of the coronavirus disease within the United States.
Go to Profile#364
Lauren Bakaletz
#171238
Overall Influence
Lauren Opremcak Bakaletz is a Professor of both Pediatrics and Otolaryngology at Ohio State University as well as the director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Go to Profile#365
Takenobu Kamada
#173869
Overall Influence
#366
Susan Baker
#147573
Overall Influence
Susan C. Baker is an American molecular virologist and professor at Loyola University Chicago, Illinois. She teaches microbiology and immunology within the Loyola Medicine Health System. She received her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. Currently, she has 80 publications, dating back to 1987, within each of the following disciplines: microbiology, infectious disease, and infectious disease control to name a few. A list of her publications can be found here.
Go to Profile#367
Margaret Sabine
#125314
Overall Influence
1928 - 2011 (83 years)
Margaret Sabine was the pioneering virologist for Australian veterinary schools. She conducted studies on viruses in cats and horses, with her characterisation of different equine viruses being her most significant scientific contribution. Other achievements include becoming head of the department of veterinary pathology and bacteriology, being chairwoman of the NSW Animal Welfare Advisory Council, an honorary Veterinary Science degree at the University of Sydney, and being a co-discoverer of viral interference.
Go to Profile#368
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.
Go to Profile#369
Susan Fisher-Hoch
#73740
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Susan P. Fisher-Hoch is a British-born infectious-disease specialist who has made major contributions to the understanding of Legionnaires' disease and Lassa fever. She is the co-author, along with her husband Joseph B. McCormick, of the memoir Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC. Fisher-Hoch is professor of epidemiology at The University of Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2008.
Go to Profile#370
Ervin Fodor
#153915
Overall Influence
Ervin Fodor is a British virologist of Hungarian origin born in Czechoslovakia. He is Professor of Virology holding the position of reader in experimental pathology in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. He is also a professorial fellow at Exeter College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#371
Kim Green
#171065
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Kim Yarbrough Green is an American virologist. She is chief of the caliciviruses section in the laboratory of infectious diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. She researches noroviruses in human disease, disease prevention, and control strategies.
Go to Profile#372
Hanneke Schuitemaker
#121083
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Hanneke Schuitemaker is a Dutch virologist, the Global Head of Viral Vaccine Discovery and Translational Medicine at Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Vaccines & Prevention, and a Professor of Virology at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers of the University of Amsterdam . She has been involved in the development of Janssen's Ebola vaccine and is involved in the development of a universal flu vaccine, HIV vaccine, RSV vaccine and COVID-19 vaccine.
Go to Profile#373
Samira Mubareka
#133980
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Samira Mubareka is a Canadian microbiologist who is a clinical scientist at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Ontario. Her research considers the influenza virus, viral transmission and aerobiology. During the COVID-19 pandemic Mubareka isolated the genome of Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in an effort to improve detection and diagnostics. She served as a member of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.
Go to Profile#374
Charles Wood
#175325
Overall Influence
#375
Margery L. Cook
#154109
Overall Influence
1925 - 2001 (76 years)
Margery Louise Cook was an American virologist. She was a researcher at University of California, Los Angeles in the field of herpes virology. Life Cook was born in Independence, Missouri in 1925. She completed a Ph.D. in medical microbiology and immunology from University of California, Los Angeles . For her 1968 dissertation, Cook researched varicella-zoster under mentor Jack G. Stevens.
Go to Profile#376
Sean Whelan
#103393
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Sean Whelan is a British-American virologist. He is known for identifying the cellular protein used as a receptor by Ebola virus, for defining the entry pathway that rabies virus uses to enter neurons, and for identifying the ribosome as a possible target for antiviral drugs. In July 2019, he was announced as the new Chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri. In February 2020, Whelan was recognized as the LGBTQ+ Scientist of the Year 2020 by the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professio...
Go to Profile#377
Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér
#136182
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, born 1967, is a Swedish immunologist who is Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis at the Karolinska Institute. In 2013, she demonstrated that a simple antiviral could improve the life expectancy of glioblastoma disease. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden, Söderberg-Nauclér on several occasions strongly criticized the Swedish response to SARS-CoV-2, claiming that they were leading the country into a catastrophe, and demanded that the Swedish state epidemiologist should resign.
Go to Profile#378
Virendra Nath Pandey
#60227
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Virendra Nath Pandey is an Indian geneticist, molecular virologist and enzymologist, known for his studies on the DNA recombinase enzyme complex. He is an associate professor at the New Jersey Medical School of the Rutgers University and a former scientist at Bhabha Atomic Research Center. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1991, for his contributions to biological sciences.
Go to Profile#379
Kizzmekia Corbett
#58717
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (40 years)
Kizzmekia "Kizzy" Shanta Corbett is an American viral immunologist. She is an Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Shutzer Assistant Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute since June 2021.
Go to Profile#380
Eleni Nastouli
#172667
Overall Influence
Eleni Nastouli is a Greek clinical virologist who works at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Great Ormond Street Hospital. At UCLH, Nastouli leads the Advanced Pathogen Diagnostics Unit, where she develops technologies for genome sequencing as well as studying how viruses are transmitted around hospitals. During the COVID-19 pandemic Nastouli led an investigation into infection rates amongst healthcare workers.
Go to Profile#381
Emmie de Wit
#122507
Overall Influence
Emmie de Wit is a Dutch-American virologist. She is chief of the molecular pathogenesis unit at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Her research combines pathogenesis studies with detailed molecular analyses to identify molecular determinants of severe respiratory tract disease within the virus and the host.
Go to Profile#382
Eric Poeschla
#177261
Overall Influence
Eric Murnane Poeschla is an American infectious disease physician, virologist, and innate immunologist. Education Poeschla graduated from the Yale School of Medicine in 1985 and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine in 1988, which was followed by a year of tropical medicine training in Papua New Guinea.
Go to Profile#383
Nancy Haigwood
#23842
Overall Influence
Nancy Logan Haigwood is an American scientist. She is a professor and the director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center. Haigwood is an HIV/AIDS researcher and serves as a volunteer board member on the Cascade AIDS Project. She is an advocate of science education and outreach.
Go to Profile#384
Vidya Arankalle
#134591
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Vidya Avinash Arankalle is an Indian virologist whose work is multidisciplinary, incorporating aspects of cell culture and microbiology. Life She is a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, and the Indian Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#385
Nathan Wolfe
#55430
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Nathan Daniel Wolfe is an American virologist. He was the founder and director of Global Viral and the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University. Career Wolfe spent over eight years conducting biomedical research in both sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. He is also the founder of Metabiota, which offers both governmental and corporate services for biological threat evaluation and management. He serves on the editorial board of EcoHealth and Scientific American and is a member of DARPA's Defense Science Research Council. His laboratory was among the first ...
Go to Profile#386
Chris Smith
#88584
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Chris Smith - "the Naked Scientist" - is a British consultant virologist and a lecturer based at Cambridge University. He is also a science radio broadcaster and writer, and presents the Naked Scientists, a programme which he founded in 2001, for BBC Radio and other networks internationally, as well as 5 live Science on BBC Radio 5 Live.
Go to Profile#387
Étienne de Harven
#66056
Overall Influence
1928 - 2019 (91 years)
Etienne de Harven was a Belgian-born pathologist and electron microscopist. Born in Brussels, he did most of his work in New York City, Paris and Toronto. He did pioneering research on viruses, mostly related to murine leukemia. He is former President of the Electron Microscopy Society of America .
Go to Profile#388
Helen Marshall
#105816
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Helen Siobhan Marshall is an Australian medical researcher who is Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Adelaide. She was named the South Australian of the Year for 2022. Early life and education Marshall's mother was a nurse and her father a general practitioner. She completed her schooling at Pembroke School, Adelaide in 1979.
Go to Profile#389
Joel Baines
#161004
Overall Influence
Joel D. Baines is an American virologist who is serving as dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, Louisiana State University since 2014. Dr. Joel Baines received a bachelor's degree in microbiology from Kansas State University in 1979, earned his VMD degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 and PhD in molecular virology from Cornell University in 1988. He did postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago. Baines was a James Law Professor of Virology in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Cornell. He was chosen as the sixth dean of LSU School of Veterinary Medicine in 2014 and holds the Dr.
Go to Profile#390
Maurice Green
#98361
Overall Influence
1926 - 2017 (91 years)
Maurice Green was an American virologist. He is regarded as a pioneer in the study of animal viruses, in particular their role in cancer. Green founded the Institute of Molecular Virology at St. Louis University School of Medicine in the late 1950s, and later served as its chairman.
Go to Profile#391
Elizabeth Kutter
#111109
Overall Influence
Dr. Elizabeth Kutter is a phage biologist based at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, USA, where she is a Professor Emeritus. She led the T4 Genome Sequencing project, and organized the biennial Evergreen International Phage Biology meetings that draw hundreds of phage researchers from all over the world.
Go to Profile#392
Caroline Tiemessen
#175043
Overall Influence
Caroline Tiemessen is a virologist and researcher involved in HIV related research. She heads the Cell Biology Research Laboratory within the Centre for HIV and STIs at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases and is a research Professor in the School of Pathology at the University of the Witwatersrand . Her research interests include the study of HIV vaccines and the search for an HIV cure in both children and adults. In 2018 she was part of the research team involved with the transplantation of a liver from an HIV-positive woman to her HIV-negative child.
Go to Profile#393
Margaret A. Liu
#98573
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Margaret A. Liu is a physician and researcher studying gene expression, immune responses, and vaccines. From 2015 to 2017, Liu served as president of the International Society of Vaccines. She is currently a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco and a foreign adjunct professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Since June 7, 2017, she has been a director of Ipsen S.A. in France.
Go to Profile#394
Rijk Gispen
#171039
Overall Influence
1910 - 2000 (90 years)
Rijk Gispen , was a Dutch virologist and former Director of the National Institute of Public Health in the Netherlands. He is well known for his research in immunology and the study of Orthopoxviruses.
Go to Profile#395
Bryan R. Cullen
#163516
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Bryan Richard Cullen is a James B. Duke Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Cullen was the Founding Director of the Duke University Center for Virology.
Go to Profile#396
Marc H. V. van Regenmortel
#110247
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Marc Hubert Victor van Regenmortel is a Belgian virologist known for his work on virus classification. After living in Brussels for the first two decades of his life, he moved to South Africa, where he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town in 1961. He was Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique Immunochemistry Laboratory at the University of Strasbourg from 1978 to 2001. He was president of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses from 1996 to 2002. He was the editor-in-chief of the Archives of Virology for twenty years prior to retiring in 2018.
Go to Profile#397
Khatijah Yusoff
#119804
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Khatijah Mohamad Yusoff is a Malaysian academician and a virologist. Her research on the Virulent Newcastle disease , a poultry virus has gained acknowledgement locally and globally. She received the UNESCO Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology in 2005.
Go to Profile#398
Wen Yumei
#159025
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Wen Yumei is a Chinese virologist and microbiologist and the current director of the Institute of Pathogenic Microorganisms, Fudan University. She is also the director of Scientific Committee of Open Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health.
Go to Profile#399
Margrét Guðnadóttir
#173968
Overall Influence
1929 - 2018 (89 years)
Margrét Guðmunda Guðnadóttir was an Icelandic doctor and virologist and the first woman to become a professor at the University of Iceland. Career Margrét completed her matriculation examination from the mathematics department at Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík in the spring of 1949. In the autumn, she enrolled as a medical student at the University of Iceland and graduated in the spring of 1956. During the summers of 1954 and 1955, she worked at the Keldur Institute for Experimental Pathology, researching pneumonia and the spread of the influenza epidemic. After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine in the spring of 1956, she worked for one year at Keldur.
Go to Profile#400
Bin He
#185138
Overall Influence
