The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential female people in Biology,
#651
Barbara Migeon
#51102
Overall Influence
1931 - 2023 (92 years)
Barbara Ruben Migeon is a professor at the Johns Hopkins University Institute of Genetic Medicine. She founded the Johns Hopkins program in Human Genetics and Molecular Biology. Migeon is the author of Females are Mosaics: X inactivation and sex differences in disease. She was awarded the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics Dimes/Colonel Harland D. Sanders Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.
Go to Profile#652
Ellen Ketterson
#27856
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Ellen D. Ketterson is an American evolutionary biologist, behavioral ecologist, neuroendocrinologist and ornithologist best known for her experimental approach to the study of life-history trade-offs in a songbird, the Dark-eyed Junco. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of Biology, Director of the Environmental Resilience Institute, and affiliate professor in Cognitive Science, Gender Studies, Integrative Study of Animal Behavior, and Neuroscience at Indiana University.
Go to Profile#653
Anne Peyroche
#27050
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Anne Peyroche, born Anne Marthe Alice Smal, is a French biologist and geneticist. From October 2017 to January 2018, she acted as interim president of the National Center for Scientific Research until fraud allegations were made.
Go to Profile#654
Marie Maynard Daly
#19850
Overall Influence
1921 - 2003 (82 years)
Marie Maynard Daly was an American biochemist. She was the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Columbia University and the first African-American woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry. Daly made important contributions in four areas of research: the chemistry of histones, protein synthesis, the relationships between cholesterol and hypertension, and creatine's uptake by muscle cells.
Go to Profile#655
Geraldine Wright
#75077
Overall Influence
Geraldine Wright is an insect neuroethologist in the United Kingdom. In 2018 she became the Professor of Comparative Physiology/Organismal Biology at the University of Oxford and in 2021 she was appointed Hope Professor of Zoology.
Go to Profile#656
Gabriele Berg
#68025
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Gabriele Berg is a biologist, biotechnologist and university lecturer in Environmental and Ecological Technology at the Technical University of Graz. Her research emphasis is on the development of sustainable methods of plant vitalisation with Bioeffectors and molecular analysis of microbial processes in the soil, particularly in the Rhizosphere.
Go to Profile#657
Lisa Steiner
#65706
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Lisa Steiner is a professor of immunology in the department of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When she arrived at MIT in 1967, she was the first woman faculty member in the department. Her research focuses on the evolution and development of the immune system, using zebrafish as a model organism.
Go to Profile#658
Avishag Zahavi
#72958
Overall Influence
1922 - 2021 (99 years)
Avishag Kadman-Zahavi was an Israeli professor emeritus of Plant Physiology at The Volcani Center for Agricultural Research, Bet-Dagan, Israel. She is best known for her close collaboration with her husband Amotz Zahavi, who developed together with her the so-called Handicap principle, a sociobiological approach to the theory of natural selection.
Go to Profile#659
Christina Agapakis
#61833
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Christina Maria Agapakis is a synthetic biologist, science writer. She is the Creative Director of the biotechnology company Ginkgo Bioworks. Education and early life Agapakis received her Bachelor of Science degree in 2006 from Yale University in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology. She then attended Harvard University, where she received her PhD in biological and biomedical sciences under the mentorship of Pamela Silver. Her thesis, on Biological Design Principles for Synthetic Biology, centered on identifying and utilizing design principles for bioengineering, keeping in mind the...
Go to Profile#660
Susanne Renner
#80580
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Susanne Sabine Renner is a German botanist. Until October 2020, she was a professor of biology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as well as director of the Botanische Staatssammlung München and the Botanischer Garten München-Nymphenburg. Since January 2021, she lives in Saint Louis, where she is an Honorary Professor of Biology at Washington University and a Research Associate at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
Go to Profile#661
Vicki Sato
#67762
Overall Influence
Vicki L. Sato is a retired professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and a professor of the practice in the department of molecular and cell biology at Harvard University. Since 2021, she has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology .
Go to Profile#662
Lily Young
#51547
Overall Influence
Lily Young is a distinguished professor of environmental microbiology at Rutgers New Brunswick. She is also a member of the administrative council at Rutgers University. She is the provost of Rutgers New Brunswick. She is a member of the Biotechnology Center for Agriculture and the Environment and has her academic appointment in the Department of Environmental Sciences.
Go to Profile#663
Dawn Wright
#43557
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Dawn Jeannine Wright is an American geographer and oceanographer. She is a leading authority in the application of geographic information system technology to the field of ocean and coastal science, and played a key role in creating the first GIS data model for the oceans. Wright is Chief Scientist of the Environmental Systems Research Institute . She has also been a professor of geography and oceanography at Oregon State University since 1995 and is a former Oregon Professor of the Year as named by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Go to Profile#664
Amy Wagers
#61131
Overall Influence
Amy J. Wagers is the Forst Family Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, an investigator in islet cell and regenerative biology at the Joslin Diabetes Center, and principal faculty of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. She is co-chair of the Department of Stem Cells and Regenerative Biology at Harvard Medical School.
Go to Profile#665
Winifred Curtis
#63776
Overall Influence
1905 - 2005 (100 years)
Winifred Mary Curtis was a British-born Australian botanist, author and a pioneer researcher in plant embryology and cytology who played a prominent role in the department of botany at the University of Tasmania , where the main plant science laboratory is named in her honour.
Go to Profile#666
Anne Cooke
#79556
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Anne Cooke, is a British biologist and academic, specialising in immunology and autoimmune diseases. From 2000 to 2013, she was Professor of Immunobiology at the University of Cambridge. She was a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, between 1992 and 2013.
Go to Profile#667
Kay Behrensmeyer
#59112
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Anna Katherine "Kay" Behrensmeyer is an American taphonomist and paleoecologist. She is a pioneer in the study of the fossil records of terrestrial ecosystems and engages in geological and paleontological field research into the ecological context of human evolution in East Africa. She is Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History . At the museum, she is co-director of the Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems program and an associate of the Human Origins Program.
Go to Profile#668
Jill Mikucki
#27405
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Jill Ann Mikucki is an American microbiologist, educator and Antarctic researcher, best known for her work at Blood Falls demonstrating that microbes can grow below ice in the absence of sunlight. She is a leader of international teams studying study ecosystems under the ice.
Go to Profile#669
Elisabeth Kalko
#57060
Overall Influence
1962 - 2011 (49 years)
Elisabeth Klara Viktoria Kalko was a German tropical scientist and ecologist working at the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Ulm. Life Elisabeth Kalko grew up in the Heilbron area and studied biology up from 1981 at University of Tübingen, Germany and graduated with a diploma. She gained a doctorate in 1991. The topic of her Ph.D. thesis was The ecolocation and hunting behaviour of three European dwarf bat species Pipistrellus pipistrellus , Pipistrellus nathuslii and Pipistrellus kuhli , in the wild. Her doctoral studies were conducted as fellow of the National Merit Foundation .
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Denise Sheer
#57557
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Denise Sheer was appointed professor of human genetics at The Institute of Cell and Molecular Science at Queen Mary, University of London in November 2006. Her fields of expertise include cell and molecular biology; cancer genetics and epigenetics; and molecular pathology of paediatric brain tumours.
Go to Profile#671
Jill P. Mesirov
#29442
Overall Influence
Jill P. Mesirov is an American mathematician, computer scientist, and computational biologist who is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. She previously held an adjunct faculty position at Boston University and was the associate director and chief informatics officer at the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Go to Profile#672
Polly Roy
#77159
Overall Influence
Polly Roy OBE is a professor and Chair of Virology at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She attended a number of schools which included Columbia University Medical School, Rutgers University, University of Alabama, and University of Oxford. In 2001 she became a part of The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and, along with being the chair of Virology, is also the co-organiser of the medical microbiology course. The virus that she has dedicated most of her career to is Bluetongue disease that affects sheep and cattle. She became interested in this virus after atte...
Go to Profile#673
Rozalyn Anderson
#49039
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Rozalyn Anderson is a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. She studies aging and caloric restriction in primates. Education Anderson received her bachelor's degree from Trinity College, Dublin and her Ph.D. in biochemistry from University College Dublin. In 2000 she moved to Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts for a post-doctoral fellowship with David Sinclair, where she studied caloric restriction and aging in yeast. She began studying mammalian aging during a second post-doctoral fellowship with Richard Weindruch at the University of Wisco...
Go to Profile#674
Virginia Hinshaw
#54453
Overall Influence
Virginia S. Hinshaw is a scientist with expertise in microbiology, virology and influenza resulting in numerous publications. She served as Vice-Chancellor at U of Wisconsin Madison and Chancellor at University of Hawai'i Manoa campus.
Go to Profile#675
Cecilia Hidalgo Tapia
#63882
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Maria Cecilia Tapia Hidalgo, known as Cecilia Tapia Hidalgo, is a Chilean biochemist and a member of the faculty at the University of Chile. In 2006 she received Chile's National Prize for Natural Sciences, becoming the first woman to win the award.
Go to Profile#676
Mihaela Zavolan
#76236
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Mihaela Zavolan is a system biologist and Professor at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. Life Mihaela Zavolan studied medicine at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Timișoara, Romania. She then graduated with a PhD in Computer Science from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, USA. Between 1993 and 2003 Mihaela Zavolan carried out research in the US, at the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, as well as at the Rockefeller University in New York. In 2003, Mihaela Zavolan was appointed Professor of Computational and Systems Biology at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel.
Go to Profile#677
Gillian Small
#34006
Overall Influence
Gillian Small is currently the president of World Science U, the higher education arm of World Science Festival. Previously, she was the University Provost & Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Fairleigh Dickinson University from 2016 through 2022.
Go to Profile#678
Susan M. Gasser
#82122
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Susan M. Gasser is a Swiss molecular biologist. From 2004 to 2019 she was the director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, where she also led a research group from 2004 until 2021. She was in parallel professor of molecular biology at the University of Basel until April 2021. Since January 2021, Susan Gasser is director of the ISREC Foundation, which supports translational cancer research. She is also professor invité at the University of Lausanne in the department of fundamental microbiology. She is an expert in quantitative biology and studies epigenetic inheritance and genome stability.
Go to Profile#679
Adrienne Clarke
#55223
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Adrienne Elizabeth Clarke is Professor Emeritus of Botany at the University of Melbourne, where she ran the Plant Cell Biology Research Centre from 1982–1999. She is a former chairman of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation , former Lieutenant Governor of Victoria and former Chancellor of La Trobe University .
Go to Profile#680
Christine Seidman
#65676
Overall Influence
Christine Edry Seidman is the Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She operates a joint lab with her husband, Jonathan Seidman, where they study genetic mechanisms of heart disease. In recognition of her scientific contributions, she was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and National Academy of Medicine.
Go to Profile#681
Kristina Curry Rogers
#65020
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Kristina "Kristi" Curry Rogers is an American vertebrate paleontologist and a professor in Biology and Geology at Macalester College. Her research focuses on questions of dinosaur paleobiology, bone histology, growth, and evolution, especially in a subgroup of sauropods called Titanosauria. She has named two dinosaur species from Madagascar, Rapetosaurus, the most complete Cretaceous sauropod and titanosaur found to date, and Vahiny, so far known only from a partial skull. She and Jeffrey A. Wilson co-authored The Sauropods, Evolution and Paleobiology, published in December 2005. Her resear...
Go to Profile#682
Nancy Andrews
#38980
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Nancy C. Andrews NAS is an American biologist and physician noted for her research on iron homeostasis. Andrews was formerly Dean of the Duke University School of Medicine. Biography Andrews grew up in Syracuse, New York. She earned a B.S. and M.S. from Yale University. She carried out her M.S. research with Joan Steitz at Yale University, studying molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and continued her graduate work with David Baltimore, earning an M.D.-Ph.D. at Harvard Medical School and M.I.T. . She completed her postdoctoral work with Stuart Orkin at Children's Hospital Boston.
Go to Profile#683
Melina Schuh
#56348
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Melina Schuh is a German biochemist and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences. She is known for her work on meiosis in mammalian oocytes, for her studies on the mechanisms leading to the age-related decline in female fertility, and for the development of the Trim-Away protein depletion method.
Go to Profile#684
Firdausi Qadri
#72469
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Firdausi Qadri is a Bangladeshi scientist with specialization in immunology and infectious disease research. She has worked over 25 years on the development of vaccines for cholera and has expertise on other infectious disease like ETEC, Typhoid, Helicobacter pylori, rotavirus, etc. Currently, she is working as a director for Centre for Vaccine Sciences of International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease and Research, Bangladesh . She also serves as chairperson of the Institute for developing Science and Health initiatives. Her scientific achievements lie in enteric infections and vaccines including Vibrio cholerae and enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli—major causes of severe diarrhea.
Go to Profile#685
Sara Shettleworth
#45535
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Sara J. Shettleworth is an American-born, Canadian experimental psychologist and zoologist. Her research focuses on animal cognition. She is professor emerita of psychology and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#686
Cheryll Tickle
#66541
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Cheryll Anne Tickle is a distinguished British scientist, known for her work in developmental biology and specifically for her research into the process by which vertebrate limbs develop ab ovo. She is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Bath.
Go to Profile#687
Elisabeth Binder
#72956
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Elisabeth Binder is a medical doctor and neuroscientist specializing in the study of mood and anxiety disorders. She is the director of the Department of Translational Research of the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany. In addition to research, she is a member of the executive committee of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology .
Go to Profile#688
Elisabetta Dejana
#85474
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Elisabetta Dejana is an Italian cell biologist and an expert on regulation of vascular system development. She has published widely and is frequently cited for her work. She has received several important awards. Dejana is a full professor at the University of Milan and has also been appointed full professor at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University in Sweden.
Go to Profile#689
Sally E. Smith
#77143
Overall Influence
1941 - 2019 (78 years)
Sarah Elizabeth Smith was a British-born Australian mycologist specialising in mycorrhiza. The Australian Academy of Science described her as "a world authority on the mycorrhizal symbiosis between plants and fungi". She was an adjunct and emeritus professor at the University of Adelaide, in the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine.
Go to Profile#690
Marie Celeste Simon
#85873
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Marie Celeste Simon is the Arthur H. Rubenstein Professor of cell and developmental biology, the scientific director of the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, and the associate director of the Abramson Cancer Center Core Facilities, at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Her research focuses on cancer cell metabolism, angiogenesis, and immunology.
Go to Profile#691
Diane Mary Bridson
#88257
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Diane Mary Bridson is a British botanist. Biography Bridson entered the Herbarium at Kew Gardens in 1963 starting as an assistant in the African section, working on Rubiaceae, eventually becoming a Principal Scientific Officer. She was Assistant Keeper for a couple of years and retired in 2002. She was senior tutor on Kew's 'International Diploma Course in Herbarium Techniques' and was co-editor of The Herbarium handbook, first published in 1989. She has published extensively on Rubiaceae, with a particular focus on Coffea, including the account for Flora of Tropical East Africa.
Go to Profile#692
Paula Tallal
#38507
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Paula Tallal is a Rutgers Board of Governors Professor of Neuroscience and co-director of the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. Tallal is a participant on scientific advisory boards and government committees for both learning disabilities and developmental language disorders.
Go to Profile#693
Jenny Graves
#77305
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Jennifer Ann Marshall Graves is an Australian geneticist. She is Distinguished Professor within the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, La Trobe University, Australia and Professor Emeritus of the Australian National University.
Go to Profile#694
Viviane Tabar
#72164
Overall Influence
Viviane Tabar is an American neurosurgeon, the Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York since 2017. Biography Tabar took her medical degree from the American University of Beirut. It was followed by a neurosurgical residency at the University of Massachusetts. She did postdoctoral work at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Go to Profile#695
B K Thelma
#53917
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
B K Thelma commonly known as Bittianda Kuttapa Thelma is a professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Delhi, South Campus, New Delhi, India. She is the Principal investigator and Co-ordinator of the Centre of excellence on Genomes Sciences and Predictive Medicine funded by the Govt. of India. She is also the Co-ordinator of a major project on newborn screening for inborn errors of metabolism in Delhi state which aims to demonstrate the feasibility of mandatory screening of newborns in the country and to generate epidemiological data for the testable IEMs in the genetically di...
Go to Profile#696
Amita Aggarwal
#24515
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Amita Aggarwal is an Indian clinical immunologist, rheumatologist and a Professor and Head at the Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology of the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow. Known for her studies in autoimmune rheumatic diseases, Aggarwal is a recipient of the Shakuntala Amir Chand Award of the Indian Council of Medical Research and an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, National Academy of Medical Sciences and the National Academy of Medical Sciences. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her...
Go to Profile#697
Una Ryan
#55923
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Una Ryan is a British-American biologist who has conducted research on vascular biology, publishing over 300 papers. After an extended research and academic career she began a career in the biotech industry. She was Director for Health Sciences of Monsanto Company; CEO, president and director of AVANT Immunotherapeutics; and is currently the chairman of The Bay Area BioEconomy Initiative, among many other associations. She is an angel investor and focuses her funds on women-led companies. She has won numerous awards and recognition during her career including the National Institute of Health's 10-year merit award, Order of the British Empire and the Albert Einstein Award.
Go to Profile#698
Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch
#66096
Overall Influence
1907 - 2007 (100 years)
Salome Gluecksohn-Waelsch was a German-born U.S. geneticist and co-founder of the field of developmental genetics, which investigates the genetic mechanisms of development. Biography Gluecksohn-Waelsch was born in Danzig, Germany to Nadia and Ilya Gluecksohn. She grew up in Germany between World War I and II, where her family faced hardships including her father's death in the 1918 influenza epidemic, severe post-war inflation, and intense anti-Semitic sentiment.
Go to Profile#699
Marie-Josée Fortin
#47329
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Marie-Josée Fortin is an ecologist and Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. Fortin holds the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Spatial Ecology at the University of Toronto. In 2016, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Go to Profile#700
Jacqueline Katz
#81308
Overall Influence
Jacqueline Marion Katz is an Australian-American microbiologist serving as the deputy director of the influenza division at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Education Katz earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology and Biochemistry and her Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Melbourne. Her 1985 dissertation was titled, The T cell response to influenza virus in the mouse. She completed postdoctoral training in influenza virology.
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