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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Subdiscipline

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List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#51

Lucy Shapiro

#14772

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Lucy Shapiro is an American developmental biologist. She is a professor of Developmental Biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She is the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research and the director of the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine.

#52

Lisa Feldman Barrett

#3332

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

#53

Aviv Regev

#15555

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Aviv Regev is a computational biologist and systems biologist and Executive Vice President and Head of Genentech Research and Early Development in Genentech/Roche. She is a core member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and professor at the Department of Biology of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Regev is a pioneer of single cell genomics and of computational and systems biology of gene regulatory circuits. She founded and leads the Human Cell Atlas project, together with Sarah Teichmann.

#54

Mary-Claire King

Mary-Claire King

#7696

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Mary-Claire King is an American geneticist. She was the first to show that breast cancer can be inherited due to mutations in the gene she called BRCA1. She studies human genetics and is particularly interested in genetic heterogeneity and complex traits. She studies the interaction of genetics and environmental influences and their effects on human conditions such as breast and ovarian cancer, inherited deafness, schizophrenia, HIV, systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis. She has been the American Cancer Society Professor of the Department of Genome Sciences and of Medical Ge...

#55

Nora Volkow

#5509

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Nora D. Volkow is a Mexican-American psychiatrist. She is currently the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse , which is part of the National Institutes of Health . Early life and education Born in Mexico City, Volkow is a daughter of Esteban Volkov, whose mother Zinaida Volkova was the eldest daughter of the Russian communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Volkow and her three sisters grew up in Coyoacán in the house where Trotsky was killed .

#56

Janet Thornton

#16004

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Dame Janet Maureen Thornton, is a senior scientist and director emeritus at the European Bioinformatics Institute , part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory . She is one of the world's leading researchers in structural bioinformatics, using computational methods to understand protein structure and function. She served as director of the EBI from October 2001 to June 2015, and played a key role in ELIXIR.

#57

Beatrice Mintz

#11450

Overall Influence

1921 - 2022 (101 years)

Beatrice Mintz was an American embryologist who contributed to the understanding of genetic modification, cellular differentiation, and cancer, particularly melanoma. Mintz was a pioneer of genetic engineering techniques and was among the first scientists to generate both chimeric and transgenic mammals.

#58

Erin K. O'Shea

#17291

Overall Influence

Erin K. O'Shea is an American biologist who is president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute . In 2013, she was named HHMI's vice president and chief scientific officer. Prior to that, she was a professor of molecular and cellular biology and chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. In 2016, her appointment as future, and first woman, president of HHMI was announced. She has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator since 2000.

#59

Susan Hockfield

Susan Hockfield

#2409

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Susan Hockfield is an American neuroscientist who served as the sixteenth president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from December 2004 through June 2012. Hockfield succeeded Charles M. Vest and was succeeded by L. Rafael Reif, who had served in her administration as Provost. Hockfield was the first biologist and the first woman to serve as the Institute's president. Hockfield currently serves as a Professor of Neuroscience in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, a Joint Professor of Work and Organization Studies in MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

#60

Ruth Lehmann

#20551

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Ruth Lehmann is a developmental and cell biologist. She is the Director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. She previously was affiliated with the New York University School of Medicine, where she was the Director of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Professor of Cell Biology, and the Chair of the Department of Cell Biology. Her research focuses on germ cells and embryogenesis.

#61

May Berenbaum

#17315

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

May Roberta Berenbaum is an American entomologist whose research focuses on the chemical interactions between herbivorous insects and their host plants, and the implications of these interactions on the organization of natural communities and the evolution of species. She is particularly interested in nectar, plant phytochemicals, honey and bees, and her research has important implications for beekeeping.

#62

Ann Graybiel

#12504

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Ann Martin Graybiel is an Institute Professor and a faculty member in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. She is an expert on the basal ganglia and the neurophysiology of habit formation, implicit learning, and her work is relevant to Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, obsessive–compulsive disorder, substance abuse and other disorders that affect the basal ganglia.

#63

Bonnie Bassler

#15991

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Bonnie Lynn Bassler is an American molecular biologist; the Squibb Professor in Molecular Biology and chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University; and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. She has researched cell-to-cell chemical communication in bacteria and discovered key insights into the mechanism by which bacteria communicate, known as quorum sensing. She has contributed to the idea that disruption of chemical signaling can be used as an antimicrobial therapy.

#64

Shirley M. Tilghman

Shirley M. Tilghman

#6069

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Shirley Marie Tilghman, is a Canadian scholar in molecular biology and an academic administrator. She is now a professor of molecular biology and public policy and president emerita of Princeton University. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized her as one of the 50 most important women in science.

#65

Shi Zhengli

#11862

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Shi Zhengli is a Chinese virologist who researches SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin. Shi directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology . In 2017, Shi and her colleague Cui Jie discovered that the SARS coronavirus likely originated in a population of cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township, Yunnan. She came to prominence in the popular press as "Batwoman" during the COVID-19 pandemic for her work with bat coronaviruses. Shi was included in Times 100 Most Influential People of 2020.

#66

Philippa Marrack

Philippa Marrack

#17767

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Philippa "Pippa" Marrack, FRS is an English immunologist and academic, based in the United States, best known for her research and discoveries pertaining to T cells. Marrack is the Ida and Cecil Green Professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Research at National Jewish Health and a distinguished professor of immunology and microbiology at the University of Colorado Denver.

#67

Sylvia Earle

#4625

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Sylvia Alice Earle is an American marine biologist, oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has been a National Geographic Explorer at Large since 1998. Earle was the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and was named by Time Magazine as its first Hero for the Planet in 1998.

#68

Julie Ahringer

#16693

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Julie Ann Ahringer is an American/British Professor of Genetics and Genomics, Director of the Gurdon Institute and a member of the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. She leads a research lab investigating the control of gene expression.

#69

Harriet Creighton

#19816

Overall Influence

1909 - 2004 (95 years)

Harriet Baldwin Creighton was an American botanist, geneticist and educator. Background Born in Delavan, Illinois, Creighton graduated from Wellesley College in 1929, and went on to complete her Ph.D. at Cornell University in 1933.

#70

Meave Leakey

#12723

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Meave G. Leakey is a British palaeoanthropologist. She works at Stony Brook University and is co-ordinator of Plio-Pleistocene research at the Turkana Basin Institute. She studies early hominid evolution and has done extensive field research in the Turkana Basin. She has Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science degrees.

#71

Janet Rowley

#8775

Overall Influence

1925 - 2013 (88 years)

Janet Davison Rowley was an American human geneticist and the first scientist to identify a chromosomal translocation as the cause of leukemia and other cancers, thus proving that cancer is a genetic disease. Rowley spent the majority of her life working in Chicago and received many awards and honors throughout her life, recognizing her achievements and contributions in the area of genetics.

#72

Noreen Murray

#15052

Overall Influence

1935 - 2011 (76 years)

Noreen Elizabeth, Lady Murray was an English molecular geneticist who helped pioneer recombinant DNA technology by creating a series of bacteriophage lambda vectors into which genes could be inserted and expressed in order to examine their function. During her career she was recognised internationally as a pioneer and one of Britain's most distinguished and highly respected molecular geneticists. Until her 2001 retirement she held a personal chair in molecular genetics at the University of Edinburgh. She was president of the Genetical Society, vice president of the Royal Society, and a memb...

#73

Mina Bissell

#11719

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Mina J. Bissell is an Iranian-American biologist known for her research on breast cancer. In particular, she has studied the effects of a cell's microenvironment, including its extracellular matrix, on tissue function.

#74

Elisabeth Vrba

#11464

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Elisabeth S. Vrba is a paleontologist at Yale University who developed the turnover-pulse hypothesis. Education Vrba earned her Ph.D. in Zoology and Palaeontology at the University of Cape Town, in 1974. Vrba studied zoology and mathematical statistics at the University of Cape Town to earn her undergraduate degree. She remained there for doctoral study in zoology and paleontology to earn her Ph.D. After receiving her doctorate, Vrba conducted her early research on African fossil records over the last several million years, tracking the sequence of fossils from analyzing the geological strata and analyzing the morphology of the fossils.

#75

Nina Fedoroff

#16105

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Nina Vsevolod Fedoroff is an American molecular biologist known for her research in life sciences and biotechnology, especially transposable elements or jumping genes. and plant stress response. In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded her the National Medal of Science, she is also a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology.

#76

Lourdes J. Cruz

Lourdes J. Cruz

#21384

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Lourdes J. Cruz is a Filipino biochemist whose research has contributed to the understanding of the biochemistry of toxic peptides from the venom of fish-hunting Conus marine snails. Throughout the Philippines, she is known as the Sea Snail Venom Specialist. The characterization of over 50 biologically active peptides from the snail's venom had been made possible, in part, by her studies. Scientific findings regarding the peptides found in snails have applications in diagnostic tools for cancers and the development of drugs for the treatment of neurological disorders. She has also contributed to the development of conotoxins as tools for examining the activity of the human brain.

#77

Gail R. Martin

#16660

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Gail Roberta Martin is an American biologist. She is professor emerita in the Department of Anatomy, University of California, San Francisco. She is known for her pioneering work on the isolation of pluripotent stem cells from normal embryos, for which she coined the term ‘embryonic stem cells’. She is also widely recognized for her work on the function of Fibroblast Growth Factors and their negative regulators in vertebrate organogenesis. She and her colleagues also made valuable contributions to gene targeting technology.

#78

Nancy Knowlton

#21871

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Nancy Knowlton is a coral reef biologist and a former Sant Chair for Marine Science at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Life She graduated from Harvard University, and from the University of California, Berkeley, with a PhD. She was a professor at Yale University, then joined the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

#79

Joanne Chory

#13693

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Joanne Chory is an American plant biologist and geneticist. Chory is a professor and director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory, at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

#80

Eva Jablonka

#15679

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Eva Jablonka is an Israeli evolutionary theorist and geneticist, known especially for her interest in epigenetic inheritance. Born in 1952 in Poland, she emigrated to Israel in 1957. She is a professor at the Cohn Institute for the History of Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. In 1981 she was awarded the Landau prize of Israel for outstanding Master of Science work and in 1988, the Marcus prize for outstanding Ph.D. work. She is a proponent of academic freedom, recognising that on such matters, "academic and political issues cannot really be kept apart", although she i...

#81

Mary-Dell Chilton

Mary-Dell Chilton

#14736

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Mary-Dell Chilton is one of the founders of modern plant biotechnology. Early life and education Chilton attended private school for her early education. She earned both a B.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She later completed postdoctoral work at the University of Washington at Seattle

#82

Ruth Sager

#21402

Overall Influence

1918 - 1997 (79 years)

Ruth Sager was an American geneticist. Sager enjoyed two scientific careers. Her first was in the 1950s and 1960s when she pioneered the field of cytoplasmic genetics by discovering transmission of genetic traits through chloroplast DNA, the first known example of genetics not involving the cell nucleus. The academic community did not acknowledge the significance of her contribution until after the second wave of feminism in the 1970s. Her second career began in the early 1970s and was in cancer genetics; she proposed and investigated the roles of tumor suppressor genes.

#83

Linda Partridge

Linda Partridge

#18169

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Professor Dame Linda Partridge is a British geneticist, who studies the biology and genetics of ageing and age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Partridge is currently Weldon Professor of Biometry at the Institute of Healthy Ageing, Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London, and Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Ageing in Cologne, Germany.

#84

Monica Turner

#26981

Overall Influence

Monica G. Turner is an American ecologist known for her work at Yellowstone National Park since the large fires of 1988. She is currently the Eugene P. Odum Professor of Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

#85

Kate Adamala

#23394

Overall Influence

Katarzyna P Adamala is an American synthetic biologist and a professor of genetics at the University of Minnesota. Research Adamala's work includes contributions to the field of astrobiology, synthetic cell engineering and biocomputing.

#86

Patricia Schulte

#23415

Overall Influence

Patricia M. Schulte is a Canadian zoologist who is a Professor of Zoology at the University of British Columbia. Her research considers physiology, genomics and population genetics. Schulte is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the former President of the Canadian Society of Zoologists.

#87

Titia de Lange

#19714

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Titia de Lange is the Director of the Anderson Center for Cancer Research, the Leon Hess professor and the head of Laboratory Cell Biology and Genetics at Rockefeller University. De Lange obtained her Masters on "Chromatin structure of the human β-globin gene locus" at the University of Amsterdam in 1981, and subsequently her PhD at the same institution in 1985 with Piet Borst on surface antigen genes in trypanosomes. In 1985 she joined Harold Varmus's lab at the University of California, San Francisco. Since 1990 she has had a faculty position at the Rockefeller University. In 2011, de Lange received the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science.

#88

Patricia Goldman-Rakic

Patricia Goldman-Rakic

#17011

Overall Influence

1937 - 2003 (66 years)

Patricia Goldman-Rakic was an American professor of neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry and psychology at Yale University School of Medicine. She pioneered multidisciplinary research of the prefrontal cortex and working memory.

#89

Carla J. Shatz

#19285

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Carla J. Shatz is an American neurobiologist and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine.

#90

Tsuneko Okazaki

Tsuneko Okazaki

#11704

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Tsuneko Okazaki is a Japanese pioneer of molecular biology known for her work on DNA replication and specifically for discovering Okazaki fragments, along with her husband Reiji. Dr. Tsuneko Okazaki has continued to be involved in academia, contributing to more advancements in DNA research.

#91

Eleanor Riley

#29256

Overall Influence

Eleanor Mary Riley was Director of the Roslin Institute, Dean of Research at the Royal School of Veterinary Studies, and professor of Immunology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focusses on understanding the immune response of the host to malaria and other diseases using human data and mouse models.

#92

Myrna Weissman

#18888

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Myrna Milgram Weissman is Diane Goldman Kemper Family Professor of Epidemiology in Psychiatry at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and Chief of the Division of Translational Epidemiology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She is an epidemiologist known for her research on the prevalence of psychiatric disorders and psychiatric epidemiology, as it pertains to rates and risks of anxiety and mood disorders across generations. Among her many influential works are longitudinal studies of the impact of parental depress...

#93

Suzanne Cory

#17805

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Suzanne Cory is an Australian molecular biologist. She has worked on the genetics of the immune system and cancer and has lobbied her country to invest in science. She is married to fellow scientist Jerry Adams, also a WEHI scientist, whom she met while studying for her PhD at the University of Cambridge, England.

#94

Ruth Hubbard

#7275

Overall Influence

1924 - 2016 (92 years)

Ruth Hubbard was a professor of biology at Harvard University, where she was the first woman to hold a tenuredd professorship position in biology. During her active research career from the 1940s to the 1960s, she made important contributions to the understanding of the biochemistry and photochemistry of vision in vertebrates and invertebrates. In 1967, she and George Wald shared the Paul Karrer Gold Medal for their work in this area.

#95

Eve Marder

#16754

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Eve Marder is a University Professor and the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Neuroscience at Brandeis University. At Brandeis, Marder is also a member of the Volen National Center for Complex Systems. Dr. Marder is known for her pioneering work on small neuronal networks which her team has interrogated via a combination of complementary experimental and theoretical techniques.

#96

Rana Dajani

#13131

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Rana Dajani is a Palestinian-Jordanian molecular biologist and tenured professor of biology and biotechnology at Hashemite University. She earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Iowa. Dajani is an expert on genetics of Circassian and Chechen populations in Jordan, also on conducting genome-wide association studies on diabetes and cancer on stem cells. Her work in stem cell research initiated the development of the Stem Cell Research Ethics Law and all regulations in Jordan. She is an advocate for the biological evolution theory in relation to the religion of Islam, and b...

#97

Janet Rossant

#27152

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Janet Rossant is president and Science Director at Gairdner Foundation, a senior scientist in the developmental & stem cell biology program, chief of research at the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, university professor at the University of Toronto teaching molecular genetics, pediatrics, and obstetrics/gynecology. He is deputy scientific director for the Canadian Stem Cell Network and senior editor of the journal eLife. She earned a B.A. in zoology from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in mammalian development from the University of Cambridge. Rossant uses live imaging, pro...

#98

Leslie B. Vosshall

Leslie B. Vosshall

#18776

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Leslie Birgit Vosshall is an American neurobiologist and currently a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and the Robin Chemers Neustein Professor of Neurogenetics and Behavior at The Rockefeller University. In 2022 she was appointed Chief Scientific Officer and vice president of HHMI. She is also the director of the Kavli Neural Systems Institute at The Rockefeller University. Vosshall, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is known for her contributions to the field of olfaction, particularly for the discovery and subsequent characterization of the insect olfactory receptor family, and the genetic basis of chemosensory behavior in mosquitoes.

#99

Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen

Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen

#27316

Overall Influence

1918 - 2015 (97 years)

Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen was a Danish-born American physiologist, who became the first woman president of the American Physiological Society in 1975. Biography Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1918, the youngest of four children of two eminent physiologists, the Nobel Laureate August Krogh and Marie Krogh.

#100

Nancy Coover Andreasen

#18673

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Nancy Coover Andreasen is an American neuroscientist and neuropsychiatrist. She currently holds the Andrew H. Woods Chair of Psychiatry at the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa.

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