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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Person Name

School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#1201

Junying Yu

#64998

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Junying Yu is a Chinese stem cell biologist. She is a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Biography Yu was born in 1975 in Zhejiang, China. In 1997, Yu graduated from the Department of Biology of Peking University. She then went to the United States to continue her research and obtained a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003.

#1202

Catherine Abbott

#96477

Overall Influence

Catherine Abbott, Lady Bird is a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Edinburgh. Education Abbott completed her BSc degree in 1983 at the University of Reading. She earned a PhD in biochemical genetics from the University of Reading and the Medical Research Council from Harwell in 1987.

#1203

Olivera Finn

#107244

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Olivera J. Finn is a Yugoslav-American immunologist who is a distinguished professor and former chair of the department of immunology at the University of Pittsburgh and former director of the Cancer Immunology Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute . She was president of the American Association of Immunologists from 2007 to 2008 and served on the AAI Council from 2002 to 2006.

#1204

Susan McCouch

#103792

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Susan Rutherford McCouch is an American geneticist specializing in the genetics of rice. She is the Barbara McClintock Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cornell University, and since 2018 a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2012, she was awarded the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

#1205

Barbara E. Jones

#59565

Overall Influence

Barbara E. Jones was an American-Canadian neuroscientist whose research concerns the chemical and neurological basis for the circadian alternation between sleep and wakefulness. Jones has been described as "a central contributor to our understanding of the brain basis of REM sleep". She was a professor emerita in the McGill University Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, associated with the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital.

#1206

Kayla C. King

#79858

Overall Influence

Kayla C. King is Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at University of Oxford, specialising in how interactions between hosts and parasites show evolutionary change. Career Kayla Christina King studied B. Sc. Zoology at University of British Columbia, Canada from 2000 to 2004 followed by a master's degree in Biology at Concordia University, graduating in 2006. She then commenced study for her doctorate at Indiana University Bloomington, USA that was awarded in 2011. She then moved to University of Liverpool, UK, for 2 years, partly financed through a Royal Society Newton Fellowship, followed by m...

#1207

Lydia Villa-Komaroff

Lydia Villa-Komaroff

#58232

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Lydia Villa-Komaroff is a molecular and cellular biologist who has been an academic laboratory scientist, a university administrator, and a business woman. She was the third Mexican-American woman in the United States to receive a doctorate degree in the sciences and is a co-founding member of The Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science . Her most notable discovery was in 1978 during her post-doctoral research, when she was part of a team that discovered how bacterial cells could be used to generate insulin.

#1208

Susan Y. Bookheimer

#109821

Overall Influence

Susan Y. Bookheimer is a professor of clinical neuroscience at UCLA School of Medicine. She is best known for her work developing brain imaging techniques to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, brain tumors, and epilepsy.

#1209

Lauren Meyers

#63264

Overall Influence

Lauren Ancel Meyers is an American integrative biologist who holds the Denton A. Cooley Centennial Professorship in Zoology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a member of the Santa Fe Institute External Faculty.

#1210

Adolé Isabelle Glitho-Akueson

#43569

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Adolé Isabelle Glitho-Akueson is a Togolese entomologist who is Professor of Animal Biology at the University of Lomé. She is the chair of UNESCO's "Women, Science and Sustainable Water Management in West Africa and Central Africa" committee and a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.

#1211

Melissa Hines

#71625

Overall Influence

Melissa Hines is a neuroscientist and Professor at the University of Cambridge. She studies the development of gender, with particular focus on how the interaction of prenatal and postnatal experience shape brain development and behavior.

#1212

Ilana B. Witten

Ilana B. Witten

#19664

Overall Influence

Ilana B. Witten is an American neuroscientist and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University. Witten studies the mesolimbic pathway, with a focus on the striatal neural circuit mechanisms driving reward learning and decision making.

#1213

Tamara Galloway

#89102

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Tamara Susan Galloway is a British marine scientist and Professor of Ecotoxicology at the University of Exeter. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 Birthday Honours.

#1214

Alicia Oshlack

#106296

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Alicia Yinema Kate Nungarai Oshlack is an Australian bioinformatician and is Co-Head of Computational Biology at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She is best known for her work developing methods for the analysis of transcriptome data as a measure of gene expression. She has characterized the role of gene expression in human evolution by comparisons of humans, chimpanzees, orangutans, and rhesus macaques, and works collaboratively in data analysis to improve the use of clinical sequencing of RNA samples by RNAseq for human disease diagnosis.

#1215

Rosalind Eeles

#102335

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Rosalind Anne Eeles is a Professor of Oncogenetics at the Institute of Cancer Research and clinician at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. She is a leader in the field of genetic susceptibility to prostate cancer, and is known for the discovery of 14 genetic variants involved in prostate cancer predisposition. According to ResearchGate, Eeles has published more than 500 articles in peer-reviewed journals, with over 34,000 citations and an h-index of 92. Eeles was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Science in 2012. She was awarded a National Institute for Health Research Senior Inv...

#1216

Antonina Polozhy

#85481

Overall Influence

1917 - 2003 (86 years)

Antonina Polozhy was a Russian botanist, geneticist, taxonomist, plant breeder and specialist in Russian cultivated plants. Biography Life Antonina was born on May 12, 1917, in the city of Tomsk. Graduating from Tomsk State University in “Systematics of Lower Plants” in 1939, she became an assistant at the Department of Morphology and Systematics of Higher Plants at TSU three years later. In 1941 she became an assistant professor, then in 1961 she became head of the Botany Department. Continuing in the department as a professor in 1966 she was also the Dean of the Faculty of Biology and Soil.

#1217

Elizabeth McClintock

#76675

Overall Influence

1912 - 2004 (92 years)

Elizabeth May McClintock was a botanist who was born in San Jacinto, California, United States, and grew up near the San Jacinto Mountains. She earned a Bachelor's degree in 1937 and a Master's degree in 1939 from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Ph.D. in botany in 1956 from the University of Michigan. She specialized in taxonomy and distribution of flowering plants, and focused on California natives. She documented invasive plants in California, and compiled information on toxicity of poisonous plants cultivated in the state.

#1218

Maria Olech

#101252

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Maria Agata Olech is a Polish Antarctic researcher, known for her work on lichenology and mycology of the Antarctic and Arctic. Olech was base leader for the Henryk Arctowski Polish Antarctic Station and the Olech Hills in the Three Sisters point area of Antarctica was named in her honour.

#1219

Upulie Divisekera

Upulie Divisekera

#66042

Overall Influence

Upulie Pabasarie Divisekera is an Australian molecular biologist and science communicator. She is a doctoral student at Monash University and is the co-founder of Real Scientists, an outreach program that uses performance and writing to communicate science. She has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, Crikey and The Guardian.

#1220

Leslie Rissler

#110359

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Leslie Jane Rissler is an American biologist best known for her work on amphibian and reptile biogeography, evolutionary ecology, systematics, and conservation, and for her strong advocacy of improving the public’s understanding and appreciation of evolution. She is currently Program Officer in the Evolutionary Processes Cluster of the Division of Environmental Biology and Directorate of Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation.

#1221

Nicole Soranzo

#101766

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Nicole Soranzo is an Italian-British senior group leader in human genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Cambridge. She is an internationally recognised Human Geneticist who has focused on the application of cutting edge genomic technologies to study the spectrum of human genetic variation associated with cardio-metabolic and immune diseases. She has led many large-scale discovery efforts including more than 1,000 novel genetic variants associated with cardio-metabolic diseases and their risk factors as well as establishing the HaemGen cons...

#1222

Judith Bronstein

#111189

Overall Influence

Judith Lee Bronstein is an American ecologist and evolutionary biologist who researches mutualisms, or positive species interactions. She has edited multiple books and volumes, including Mutualism, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2016.

#1223

Erika Holzbaur

#108935

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Erika L F. Holzbaur is an American biologist who is the William Maul Measey Professor of Physiology at University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Her research considers the dynamics of organelle motility along cytoskeleton of cells. She is particularly interested in the molecular mechanisms that underpin neurodegenerative diseases.

#1224

Ru-Chih Chow Huang

#80028

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Ru-Chih Chow Huang is a Taiwanese-American biology professor at Johns Hopkins University. She is a biochemist who worked with James F. Bonner and Doug Fambrough to characterize and discern functions for nuclear histones in the early 1960s when the field lacked a consensus on types and functions of individual histone proteins. Later she made discoveries about the molecular biology of cancer and of viral gene regulation.

#1225

Marjorie Hoy

#105746

Overall Influence

1941 - 2020 (79 years)

Marjorie Ann Hoy was an American entomologist and geneticist known for her work using integrated pest management and biological control in agriculture. She was Professor and Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida, Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Entomological Society of America. She was known as a pioneer in using genetic engineering to reduce the impact of agricultural pests, including developing pesticide resistant predators to control populations of destructive pests in areas where pesticides are applied.

#1226

Emma Lundberg

#27355

Overall Influence

Emma Lundberg is a Swedish cell biologist who is a professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Director of Cell Profiling at the Science for Life Laboratory. Her research considers spatial proteomics and cell biology, making use of an antibody-based approach to assess fundamental aspects of human biology. She looks to understand why certain variations in human proteins can cause disease.

#1227

Gisela Storz

#108279

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Gisela Storz is a microbiologist at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health . She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

#1228

Lúcia Mendonça Previato

#67355

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Lúcia Mendonça Previato is a Brazilian biologist. She was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2004 for her research into preventing Chagas disease. Biography Lucia Mendonça Previato was born in 1949, in Maceió, Brazil and moved with her family to Rio de Janeiro when she was 5 years old. She graduated from Universidade Santa Úrsula in 1971 and obtained her Doctorate from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Microbiology and Immunology in 1976.

#1229

Ann T. Bowling

#97028

Overall Influence

1943 - 2000 (57 years)

Ann Trommershausen Bowling was an American scientist who was one of the world's leading geneticists in the study of horses, conducting research in the areas of molecular genetics and cytogenetics. She was a major figure in the development of testing to determine animal parentage, first with blood typing in the 1980s and then DNA testing in the 1990s. She later became known for her studies of hereditary diseases in horses and equine coat color genetics, as well as research on horse evolution and the development of horse breeds. She studied the population genetics of feral horses, did conside...

#1230

Judy Lieberman

#74478

Overall Influence

Judy Lieberman is a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and holds an endowed chair in cellular and molecular medicine at Boston Children's Hospital. Early life Judy Lieberman was born in September 1947, in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in New Jersey with her parents and two sisters Phyllis and Donna.

#1231

Patricia Hunt

#114291

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Patricia A. Hunt is Meyer Distinguished Professor in the School of Molecular Bioscience at Washington State University. Her primary research interest lies in human aneuploidy, mammalian germ cells and meiosis. She is best known for showing the adversary effect of Bisphenol A on the reproductive system of mammalians. In 2018, her team discovered that replacement Bisphenols also affects reproductive health, and this over generations.

#1232

Ragnhild A. Lothe

#79854

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Ragnhild Adelheid Lothe is a Norwegian microbiologist and cancer researcher. She was born in Bergen, but grew up in Gjøvik. She studied mathematics, chemistry and biology at the University of Bergen and University of Oslo, graduating from the former with a master's thesis on microbiology written at the State Institute of Public Health. She took her PhD degree at the University of Oslo in 1992.

#1233

Arlene Sharpe

#108222

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Arlene Helen Sharpe is an American immunologist and Kolokotrones University Professor at Harvard University and Chair of the Department of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. In 2017, she received the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize with Gordon Freeman, Lieping Chen, James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their collective contributions to the pre-clinical foundation and development of immune checkpoint blockade, a novel form of cancer therapy that has transformed the landscape of cancer treatment. She served as the hundredth president of the American Association of Immunologists from 2016 to 2017 and served as an AAI Council member from 2013 to 2016.

#1234

Jean Thomas

#84967

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Dame Jean Olwen Thomas, is a Welsh biochemist, former Master of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and Chancellor of Swansea University. Early life and education Thomas was born in Treboeth, Swansea to John Robert and Lorna Thomas, and she attended Llwyn-y-Bryn High School for Girls. She continued her education at University College of Swansea where she received a first class Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1964 followed by a PhD in 1967. Her thesis was on Hydroxyl-carbonyl interaction in cyclic peptides and depsipeptides.

#1235

Kanta Subbarao

#99409

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Kanta Subbarao is an Indian virologist, molecular geneticist, and physician-scientist. She is director of the World Health Organization collaborating centre for reference and research on influenza. Subbarao is also a professor at the Doherty Institute.

#1236

Abby Dernburg

#99533

Overall Influence

Abby F. Dernburg is a professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a Faculty Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

#1237

Rosemary Waring

#66895

Overall Influence

Rosemary Waring, an honorary Reader in human toxicology at the School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, was the first researcher to produce scientific evidence suggestive of abnormal sulfur metabolism affecting people with autism spectrum disorders. Her findings suggest that people with autism present with consistently lower levels of circulating plasma sulfate and higher than normal levels of urinary sulfate than non-symptomatic controls . Follow-up work has suggested that people with autism also present with higher than normal levels of other sulfur-related compounds, including sulfi...

#1238

Catherine Day

#41601

Overall Influence

Catherine Louise Day is a New Zealand biochemist. She is currently a professor and was the head of the biochemistry department at the University of Otago. Career After a BSc at Massey University, Day completed a PhD entitled Expression and characterisation of the n-terminal half of human lactoferrin in 1993, also at Massey, before moving to the University of Otago where she rose to professor and head of department.

#1239

Silvia Maciá

#102964

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Silvia Maciá is an American marine biologist and professor of biology at Barry University in Miami Shores, FL. Her research interests involves both laboratory and field work addressing pipefish mating behavior, seagrass community ecology, coral reef grazing ecology and seagrass restoration.

#1240

Mariel Vázquez

#61468

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Mariel Vázquez is a Mexican mathematical biologist who specializes in the topology of DNA. She is a professor at the University of California, Davis, jointly affiliated with the departments of mathematics and of microbiology and molecular genetics.

#1241

Kathleen Basford

#83167

Overall Influence

1916 - 1998 (82 years)

Kathleen Basford was a British botanist, with a special interest in genetics. She is known for discovering a form of fuchsia that was a cross between a New Zealand and Mexican fuchsia, proving this form of flower existed 20–30million years ago, before the continents had separated.

#1242

Katya Rubia

#86796

Overall Influence

Katya Rubia is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre and Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, both part of the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.

#1243

Jane A. McKeating

#108806

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Jane A. McKeating is a professor of molecular biology at Oxford University, and honorary professor at the University of Birmingham, England, where she worked as a professor of molecular virology until 2017. She is listed as a notable scientist in Thomson Reuters' Highly Cited Researchers 2014, ranking her among the top 1% most cited scientists.

#1244

Jill Bargonetti

Jill Bargonetti

#63779

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Jill Bargonetti is an American professor at the City University of New York with dual appointments at Hunter College and The Graduate Center. Her research is focused on tumor suppressor protein p53 and its role as an oncogene when it is mutated in breast cancer.

#1245

Jackie Hunter

#49865

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Ann Jacqueline Hunter CBE FMedSci FBPharmacolS FRSB is a British scientist who is a board director of BenevolentAI. Hunter is also a visiting professor at St George's Hospital Medical School and Imperial College. She is Chair of the Trustees of the Sainsbury Laboratories at Norwich, chair of the board of the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst and chair of the board of Brainomix. She was previously CEO of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

#1246

Persephone Borrow

#79813

Overall Influence

Persephone Borrow is a viral immunologist specialising in T-cell responses in acute and early HIV-1 infections. She has been at the University of Oxford since 2005 and in 2016 was made a professor there.

#1247

Victoria Braithwaite

#73747

Overall Influence

1967 - 2019 (52 years)

Victoria A. Braithwaite was a British scientist who was a Professor of Animal Behaviour and Cognition at Pennsylvania State University. She was the first person to demonstrate that fish feel pain, which impacted animal welfare research and changed guidelines for the treatment of fish in laboratories and fisheries in the UK, Europe, and Canada.

#1248

Marlene Belfort

#87684

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Marlene Belfort is an American biochemist known for her research on the factors that interrupt genes and proteins. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been admitted to the United States National Academy of Sciences.

#1249

Valerie Paul

#112705

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Valerie J. Paul is the Director of the Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, in Fort Pierce, FL since 2002 and the Head Scientist of the Chemical Ecology Program. She is interested in marine chemical ecology, and specializes in researching the ecology and chemistry of Cyanobacteria, blue-green algae, blooms. She has been a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1996, and was the chairperson of the Marine Natural Products Gordon Research Conference in 2000.

#1250

María Elena Álvarez-Buylla Roces

#62308

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

María Elena Álvarez-Buylla Roces is a Mexican professor of molecular genetics at National Autonomous University of Mexico and the director of the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología appointed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2018.

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