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

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#851

Needhi Bhalla

#77927

Overall Influence

Needhi Bhalla is an American biologist. She researches mitosis and meiosis in Caenorhabditis elegans. Bhalla is a professor at University of California, Santa Cruz. Early life and education Needhi Bhalla was raised on the southern shore of Long Island near Queens. She was born to Indian parents in Khatri family who emigrated to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s for higher education opportunities. Bhalla's mother is a nutritionist and her father, a United States Air Force engineer.

#852

Jessica Kissinger

#44405

Overall Influence

Jessica Kissinger is a Distinguished Research Professor at the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia and director of the Institute of Bioinformatics. Her research focus is on the evolution, assembly and data curation of protozoan parasite genomes, particularly Cryptosporidium, Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium.

#853

Kerry-Jayne Wilson

#70174

Overall Influence

1950 - 2022 (72 years)

Kerry-Jayne Wilson was a New Zealand biologist and lecturer in ecology at Lincoln University in the Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Work As an undergraduate, Wilson spent the summer of 1969–1970 in the Snares Islands, working as an assistant to the Australian ornithologist and photographer John Warham. She was struck by the huge numbers of sooty shearwaters , penguins, petrels, and prions, and seabirds later became her research focus. She earned a Master of Science degree at the University of Canterbury, and was appointed a faculty member at Lincoln College in 1986.

#854

Liise-anne Pirofski

#86236

Overall Influence

Liise-anne Pirofski is a Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center. She is a Member of the Association of American Physicians, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Microbiology, American College of Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

#855

Terry Orr-Weaver

#79240

Overall Influence

Terry L. Orr-Weaver is an American molecular biologist in the MIT Department of Biology with a joint appointment to the Whitehead Institute. She does research on developmental biology, with a focus on "[c]oordination of cell growth and division with development, with particular focus on the oocyte-to-embryo transition, control of cell size, and regulation of metazoan DNA replication." Orr-Weaver and her collaborators have identified two proteins necessary for the proper sorting of chromosomes during meiosis with implications for cancer and birth defects. In 2006 she was elected to the National...

#856

Maria Byrne

#98175

Overall Influence

Maria Byrne is an Australian marine biologist, and professor of marine and developmental biology at the University of Sydney and a member of the Sydney Environment Institute. She spent 12 years as director of the university's research station on One Tree Island.

#857

Marion Leboyer

#61250

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Marion Leboyer is a French psychiatrist, university professor and hospital practitioner at the Paris-Est Créteil University . Biography After completing her medical studies at Paris Descartes University, a master's degree and a PhD in science at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, and being appointed intern at the Paris hospitals in 1981, she was head of clinic at La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital from 1989 to 1994. From 2002 to 2007, she was head of the sectorized psychiatry department at Albert Chenevier Hospital and of the psychiatry department at Henri Mondor Hospital in 2002 before being appointed head of the psychiatry division there.

#858

Erin Schuman

#77326

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Erin Margaret Schuman, born May 15, 1963, in California, US, is a neurobiologist who studies neuronal synapses. She is currently a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. Career Erin Schuman attended the University of Southern California , where she received her B.A. in Psychology . She continued her education to obtain a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Princeton University . She conducted postdoctoral research from 1990–1993 in Daniel V. Madison’s lab in the Molecular and Cellular Physiology Department at Stanford University. From there, Schuman was recruited to join the faculty i...

#859

Kristen Harris

#83269

Overall Influence

Kristen Harris is Professor of Neuroscience and Fellow in the Center for Learning and Memory at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research group at UT Austin uses serial section electron microscopy to study synapses. She is also a member of the Institute for Neuroscience and the Center for Theoretical and Computational Learning.

#860

Susan Smalley

#54066

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Susan Smalley is an American behavioral geneticist, writer and activist. The co-author of Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness, she is the founder of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior , and professor emerita in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA. Her research centers on the genetic basis of childhood-onset behavior disorders, such as ADHD, and the cognitive and emotional impact of mindfulness meditation on health and wellbeing. She has published more than 100 ...

#861

Nancy Ip

#23882

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Nancy Chu Ip Yuk-yu , as known as Nancy Y. Ip in academic publications, is a Hong Kong neuroscientist. She is serving as the 5th President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology since 19 October 2022. She had served as the Vice-President of Research and Development, the Morningside Professor of Life Science, and Director of the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience at the HKUST. Since December 2022, Ms. Ip has also served as the a deputy from the Hong Kong delegation to the National People's Congress and received the largest number of votes from the 1273 member Electo...

#862

Marisol Aguilera

Marisol Aguilera

#25679

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Marisol Aguilera Meneses is a Venezuelan biologist whose research involves the ecology of vertebrates. She is the president of the Venezuelan Association for the Advancement of Science and the International Organization Interciencia, which brings together associations for the advancement of science from all over the Americas.

#863

Jenny Morton

#74467

Overall Influence

Anne Jennifer Morton, , known as Jenny Morton, is a New Zealand neurobiologist and academic, specialising in neurodegenerative diseases. She has been a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, since 1991 and a Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Cambridge since 2009. Her current research is focused on Huntington's disease, and she is using sheep as a large animal model for the disease. This research has led her to discover that sheep can recognise human faces.

#864

Amanda Fisher

#53468

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Dame Amanda Gay Fisher is a British cell biologist and Director of the Medical Research Council London Institute of Medical Sciences at the Hammersmith Hospital campus of Imperial College London, where she is also a Professor leading the Institute of Clinical Sciences. She has made contributions to multiple areas of cell biology, including determining the function of several genes in HIV and describing the importance of a gene's location within the cell nucleus.

#865

Robin Patel

#96834

Overall Influence

Robin Patel is a Canadian born microbiologist and Elizabeth P. and Robert E. Allen Professor of Individualized Medicine, a Professor of Microbiology, and a Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. She is widely recognized as a leader in the field of clinical microbiology and has held a variety of leadership positions including 2019–2020 President of the American Society for Microbiology and Director of the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group Laboratory Center of the National institutes of Health. She is currently the Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and...

#866

Jane Elith

#74720

Overall Influence

Professor Jane Elith is an ecologist in the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne. She graduated from the School of Agriculture and Forestry at the University of Melbourne in 1977. She specialises in ecological models that focus on spatial analysis and prediction of the habitat of plant and animal species. Following graduation, she was a research assistant and tutor for three years, and then spent the following 12 years raising her children. She returned to the University of Melbourne in 1992 and later commenced a part-time PhD in the School of Botany. She was awarded her PhD in 2002 on 'Predicting the distribution of plants'.

#867

Antoinette Pirie

Antoinette Pirie

#73550

Overall Influence

1905 - 1991 (86 years)

Antoinette Pirie was a British biochemist, ophthalmologist, and educator. Biography Antoinette Patey was born in Bond Street, London. Her father was a botanist and pharmacist. She was educated at Wycombe Abbey School, and then achieved a first-class honours in natural sciences from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1932. She completed her PhD at the biochemical laboratory in Cambridge under the professorship of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins. She married fellow biochemist Norman Pirie in 1931. They had a son and a daughter.

#868

Kira Makarova

#89400

Overall Influence

Kira S. Makarova is an Estonian-American evolutionary biologist known for her research on the biology of CRISPR and Cas9. She is a staff scientist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

#869

Hannele Ruohola-Baker

#64759

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Hannele Ruohola-Baker is a Professor of Biochemistry and Associate Director of the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Her research focuses on the molecular biology of stem cells and on the use of Drosophila as model organisms for human diseases.

#870

JoAnne Flynn

#96627

Overall Influence

JoAnne L. Flynn is an American microbiologist and immunologist. She is a distinguished professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine where she researches mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogenesis and immunology. She was president of the American Association of Immunologists.

#871

Blaire Van Valkenburgh

#91334

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Blaire Van Valkenburgh is an American paleontologist and holds the Donald R. Dickey Chair in Vertebrate Biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of California Los Angeles. She is a former president of Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

#872

Vera Meyer

#95292

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Vera Meyer is a German biotechnologist and professor at the Technical University of Berlin. She is head of the department for Applied and Molecular Microbiology. Her main scientific field is the research of fungi and their potential use for a sustainable circular economy. Meyer also works as a visual artist, combining her scientific knowledge in microbiology with artistic creation.

#873

Carol Fierke

#89867

Overall Influence

Carol A. Fierke is an American biochemist who is the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Brandeis University. Her research considers biological catalysts and understanding biofunction. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

#874

Victoria Chan-Palay

#68338

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Victoria Lye-Hua Chan-Palay is a Singaporean-born neuroscientist who has worked in the United States and Switzerland. Early life and education Chan is the second daughter of noted Singaporean swimming coach Dr. Chan Ah Kow. Among her four brothers and two sisters is Patricia Chan, who represented Singapore in swimming at the Southeast Asian Games in the 1960s and 1970s. As a young woman, Chan excelled at school in science, and herself represented Singapore in international swimming competitions as well.

#875

Martha Merrow

#79651

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Martha Merrow is an American chronobiologist. She currently chairs the Institute of Medical Psychology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her career focuses primarily on investigating the molecular and genetic mechanisms of the circadian clock. Since joining the Ludwig Maximilian University in 1996, Merrow has investigated molecular and genetic mechanisms of the circadian clock as well as daily human behavior and medical psychology.

#876

Manjula Reddy

#88849

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Manjula Reddy is an Indian bacterial geneticist. She is the chief scientist at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India. In 2019, she won the Infosys Prize in Life Sciences for her work on bacterial cell wall structure and synthesis. She is a Fellow of the Telangana Academy of Sciences and the Indian Academy of Sciences.

#877

Julia Morton

#69347

Overall Influence

1912 - 1996 (84 years)

Julia Frances McHugh Morton was an American author and botanist. She was research professor of biology, and director of the Morton Collectanea at the University of Miami. She was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1974. Well known as a lecturer on toxic, edible and otherwise useful plants, she wrote 10 books and 94 scientific papers, and contributed to an additional 12 books and 27 papers.

#878

Sally J. Rogers

#49153

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Sally J. Rogers is professor of MIND Institute and department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Davis. She is a scientist working on early diagnosis and interventions methods for autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. She is a pioneer in the field of autism treatment and pioneered the development of The Early Start Denver Model . She has published nearly two-hundred papers on the field of autism, early diagnosis and treatments.

#879

Lina M. Obeid

#76043

Overall Influence

1955 - 2019 (64 years)

Lina M. Obeid was an American physician and cancer researcher. Early life Lina Marie Obeid was born in New York and raised in Lebanon, the daughter of Dr. Sami Obeid, a renowned Lebanese surgeon, and Rosette Z. Obeid, a Palestinian writer and cookbook author. Obeid earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Rutgers University. She earned her medical degree at the American University of Beirut in 1983.

#880

Monica Justice

#95888

Overall Influence

Monica J. Justice is an American–Canadian developmental geneticist. She is the Canada Research Chair in Mammalian Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto and Program Head of Genetics and Genome Biology at SickKids Hospital.

#881

Zoya Klyuchko

#88394

Overall Influence

1933 - 2016 (83 years)

Zoya Fedorivna Klyuchko was a Ukrainian entomologist, lepidopterist, zoologist, professor and doctor of biological sciences. She focused on the research of faunistics; morphology; taxonomy and phylogeny of the scoop family Noctuidae, value as pests in rural areas plants and the role in nature in rare and disappearing insects. Klyuchko worked at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, the I. I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology and the Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University and wrote between 130 and 160 scientific articles.

#882

Hazel Barton

#88398

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Dr. Hazel A. Barton is an English born microbiologist, geologist and cave diving explorer, interested in extremophile microorganisms. She is a Professor and Director of the Integrated Bioscience Program at the University of Akron and has appeared in several documentaries.

#883

Kat Holt

#89322

Overall Influence

Kathryn "Kat" Elizabeth Holt is an Australian computational biologist specializing in infectious disease genomics. She is a professor at Monash University's Department of Infectious Diseases and a professor of Microbial Systems Genomics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine . Her current research focuses on investigating the evolution and dissemination of antimicrobial resistance. In 2015, Holt received the L'Oréal-UNESCO International Rising Talent Award.

#884

Carol Gross

#91628

Overall Influence

Carol A. Gross is a molecular biologist and professor of cell and tissue biology at the University of California San Francisco . Her research focuses on transcriptional regulation in bacteria. Research and career At UCSF Dr. Carol A. Gross runs a lab that takes genetic, biochemical, and systems approaches to study regulatory mechanisms of E. coli stress responses, protein interactions in the bacterial transcription apparatus, and genome-wide control of gene expression. She is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of th...

#885

Felicity Huntingford

#96140

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Felicity Anne Huntingford FRSE is an aquatic ecologist known for her work in fish behaviour. Career Huntingford's research interests include the aggression in sticklebacks and the welfare of farmed fish.

#886

María Teresa López Boegeholz

#74929

Overall Influence

1927 - 2006 (79 years)

María Teresa López Boegeholz was a Chilean oceanographer and academic. She was considered a pioneer in the field of marine sciences. Biography She was born in La Unión. She moved to Santiago in 1948 and studied biology and chemistry at the Instituto Pedagógico de la Universidad de Chile. In 1952, she began working as a teaching assistant at the Liceo Manuel de Salas. She subsequently worked as a researcher at the Instituto Pedagógico and at the Centro de Investigaciones Zoológicas. In 1966, she became a professor of zoology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. During this period, her interest was mainly focused on organisms in aquatic environments.

#887

Nancy Atkinson

#61689

Overall Influence

1910 - 1999 (89 years)

Nancy Atkinson, was an Australian bacteriologist. In the 1950s, she was recognised as one of the world's leading authorities on bacteriology, and led research on Salmonella bacteria, antibiotic and vaccine development, and the isolation of the poliovirus.

#888

Moi Meng Ling

#26011

Overall Influence

Sherry Moi Meng Ling is a Malaysian virologist, currently serving as a professor at the Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo. Her research focuses on innate immune system to mosquito-borne virus infection and field epidemiology.

#889

Ten Feizi

#90347

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Ten Feizi is a Turkish Cypriot/British molecular biologist who is Professor and Director of the Glycosciences Laboratory at Imperial College London. Her research considers the structure and function of glycans. She was awarded the Society for Glycobiology Rosalind Kornfeld award in 2014. She was also awarded the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021.

#890

Marcela Contreras

#55011

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Dame Carmen Marcela Contreras Arriagada, DBE is a Chilean-born British leading blood expert, immunologist and university educator. Born in Curicó in central Chile and raised in Coelemu, she originally obtained her M.D. degree from the Universidad de Chile, Santiago, in 1968. As a recipient of a British Council scholarship, she went to the UK in 1972 to study immunology and has remained there ever since. She retired in February 2007 as national director for diagnostics, development and research for the National Blood Service after working for the organisation for over 20 years.

#891

Susan L. Swain

#95347

Overall Influence

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

#892

Marta Mirazón Lahr

Marta Mirazón Lahr

#46202

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

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

#893

Eline Slagboom

#75217

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

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

#894

Stacy Jupiter

#49693

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

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

#895

Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti

#99816

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

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

#896

Lucilla Poston

#78008

Overall Influence

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

#897

Carmen Lelia Cristóbal

#96891

Overall Influence

1932 - 2019 (87 years)

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

#898

Victoria Lundblad

Victoria Lundblad

#83989

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

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

#899

Karen Duff

#39097

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

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

#900

Vicki Funk

#90353

Overall Influence

1947 - 2019 (72 years)

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

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