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,
#1251
Ivette Perfecto
#54998
Overall Influence
Ivette Perfecto is an ecologist and professor at the University of Michigan. Her work focuses on complex ecosystem dynamics and the application of ecological theories to agricultural systems. Early life and education Ivette Perfecto was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As a child, she was fascinated by the environment of the Caribbean. She enjoyed the outdoors, particularly the underwater world she could explore while snorkeling. The interactions she observed between organisms sparked her original interest in biology. However, the contamination of many of Puerto Rico's ecosystems that resulted ...
Go to Profile#1252
Montserrat Vilà
#95924
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Montserrat Vilà i Planella is a Spanish ecologist who primarily studies the biological and environmental factors that determine the presence and success of invasive plants, as well as their ecological and economic impacts.
Go to Profile#1253
Esra Battaloğlu
#111257
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Esra Battaloğlu is a Turkish geneticist researching the human genetics of inherited peripheral neuropathies. She is an assistant professor at Boğaziçi University. Education Battaloğlu graduated from High School TED Ankara Koleji in 1982. She completed a B.S. in the department of biology at the Middle East Technical University in 1986. Battaloğlu earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in the department of biology at Boğaziçi University.
Go to Profile#1254
Devra G. Kleiman
#109765
Overall Influence
1942 - 2010 (68 years)
Devra Gail Kleiman was an American biologist who helped create the field of conservation biology. She is known for her work to conserve endangered species, especially the golden lion tamarin of Brazil. Her efforts to use zoos to manage genetics of rare species was "one of the greatest success stories in the history of modern zoos," according to Steven Monfort, director of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. She is also known for her efforts to breed pandas at the National Zoo.
Go to Profile#1255
Jenefer Blackwell
#110149
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (123 years)
Jenefer Blackwell is a Professor of Molecular Parasitology at the Telethon Kids Institute in the University of Western Australia. She studies host susceptibility and resistance to infectious diseases.
Go to Profile#1256
Susan R. Barry
#42154
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Susan R. Barry is a Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences and Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience and Behavior at Mount Holyoke College and the author of two books, Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions and Coming to Our Senses: A Boy Who Learned to See, A Girl Who Learned to Hear, and How We All Discover the World. Barry was dubbed Stereo Sue by neurologist and author Oliver Sacks in a 2006 New Yorker article with that name. Barry's first book greatly expands on Sacks' article and discusses the experience of gaining stereovision through optometric vision therapy, after a lifetime of being stereoblind.
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Jennifer Stow
#107219
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Jennifer Lea Stow is deputy director , NHMRC Principal Research Fellow and head of the Protein Trafficking and Inflammation laboratory at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience , The University of Queensland, Australia. She received a PhD from Monash University in Melbourne in 1982., postdoctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine in the Department of Cell Biologyand first faculty position as an assistant professor at Harvard University in the Renal Unit, Departments of Medicine and Pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Go to Profile#1258
Anne Warner
#86941
Overall Influence
1940 - 2012 (72 years)
Anne E. Warner was a British biologist and a professor in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at University College London. Her major field of research was morphogenesis. Warner was known for her work and leadership in a variety of research projects and organisations. She is perhaps most well known for her roles as a cell electrophysiologist, politician of science, and founder of the organisation UCL centre CoMPLEX.
Go to Profile#1259
Ann Linnea Sandberg
#55277
Overall Influence
1938 - 2009 (71 years)
Ann Linnea Sandberg was an American immunologist and the acting director of the Center for Integrative Craniofacial Research at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research . Previously, Sandberg was a lab chief and researcher for 23 years in the NIH Intramural Research Program at NIDCR.
Go to Profile#1260
Lucina Uddin
#70540
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Lucina Q. Uddin is an American cognitive neuroscientist who is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research investigates the relationship between brain connectivity and cognition in typical and atypical development using network neuroscience approaches.
Go to Profile#1261
Beatrice Hahn
#85483
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Beatrice H. Hahn is an American virologist and biomedical researcher best known for work which established that HIV, the virus causing AIDS, began as a virus passed from apes to humans. She is a professor of Medicine and Microbiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In November 2002, Discover magazine listed Hahn as one of the 50 most important women scientists.
Go to Profile#1262
Mireille Chinain
#43443
Overall Influence
Mireille Chinain is a marine scientist from French Polynesia. Life Chinain is a graduate of the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the University of French Polynesia. From 1990 to 2000, Chinain was a scientist in the medical oceanography unit at Louis Malardé Institute in Tahiti, French Polynesia. In 2000 Chinain was appointed head of the ciguatera research program at the institute. Research in her laboratory focuses on the ecology, biodiversity, taxonomy and systematics of the ciguatera-causing dinoflagellate Gambierdiscus, and developing of methods for toxin detection. Chinai...
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Catherine H. Graham
#108931
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Catherine H. Graham is an American team leader and senior scientist working on the Biodiversity & Conservation Biology, and the Spatial Evolutionary Ecology research units at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL. From 2003 to 2017 she was an Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the Stony Brook University, and since her appointment at the WSL in 2017 she has maintained adjunct status there. She received both her M.S. degree and her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri at St. Louis, and did post-doctoral training at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#1264
Leanne Armand
#81402
Overall Influence
1968 - 2022 (54 years)
Leanne Armand was an Australian professor of marine science. She was an expert in the identification of diatoms in the Southern Ocean. She was known for her contributions to the understanding of past Southern Ocean dynamics and sea ice as a result of her knowledge of diatom distributions and ecology.
Go to Profile#1265
Judith Lesnaw
#60094
Overall Influence
Judith Alice Lesnaw is an American virologist, photographer, and inductee of the University of Kentucky's Hall of Fame. She was the first woman hired into Biology, the first woman to be tenured, and the first molecular biologist at the University of Kentucky.
Go to Profile#1266
Sara Cherry
#92198
Overall Influence
Sara R. Cherry is an American microbiologist who is John W. Eckman Professor of Medical Science and Professor of Microbiology in Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research involves genetic and mechanistic studies of virus–host interactions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cherry looked to identify novel therapeutic strategies.
Go to Profile#1267
Anne Stone
#81586
Overall Influence
Anne C. Stone is an American anthropological geneticist and a Regents' Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on population history and understanding how humans and the great apes have adapted to their environments, including their disease and dietary environments. Stone is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Julia Bodmer
#95601
Overall Influence
1934 - 2001 (67 years)
Lady Julia Gwynaeth Bodmer was a British geneticist and trained economist. Involved in the discovery and definition of the human leukocyte antigen system of genetic markers, Bodmer became one of the world's leading experts in HLA serology and the genetic definition of the HLA system. A prominent figure in the field of immunogenetics, her discoveries helped the understanding and development of knowledge about HLA associations with diseases including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and cancer. As well as being a distinguished scientist in her own right, she collaborated throughout her career with her husband, the human and cancer geneticist Sir Walter Bodmer.
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Gisou van der Goot
#109356
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Françoise Gisou van der Goot is a Swiss-Dutch cell biologist. She is a professor and the Vice President for Responsible Transformation at EPFL . Career Gisou van der Goot studied engineering at the École Centrale de Paris. She pursued a PhD in molecular biophysics at the Saclay Nuclear Research Centre . After her PhD, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. In 1994 she worked as a group leader in the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Geneva and, subsequently, from 2001 as associate professor in the department of microbiology and molecular medicine.
Go to Profile#1270
Christine Beeton
#40136
Overall Influence
Christine Beeton is an immunologist and associate professor at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. She works within the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics. Beeton graduated from the Faculté des Sciences de Luminy within the Université de la Mediterranée in Marseille, France and later as a postdoctoral fellow from the University of California. Her professional interests and areas of expertise include autoimmune diseases , drug development, ions and ion channels in disease, and targeted therapies.
Go to Profile#1271
Suzanne Lambin
#97972
Overall Influence
1902 - 2008 (106 years)
Suzanne Lambin was a French microbiologist who studied the evolution of bacterial cultures and how various antiseptic agents affected those cultures. Lambin's work in microbiology led to a career in pharmacy and microbiology which won her recognition within France.
Go to Profile#1272
Susan Lowey
#85926
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Susan Lowey is an American biophysicist researching the structure and function of contractile proteins. She currently teaches in the Department of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics at the University of Vermont and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the Biophysical Society.
Go to Profile#1273
Yael Niv
#80020
Overall Influence
Yael Niv is a neuroscientist who studies human and animal reinforcement learning and decision making. She is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University. Niv is known for her research contributions and for her visible advocacy work fighting against gender bias in neuroscience. Niv is founder of biaswatchneuro.com, a website that tracks statistics in an effort to combat sexism in science.
Go to Profile#1274
Christine Vogel
#110007
Overall Influence
Christine Vogel is a German-American molecular biologist who is an associate professor at the New York University. Her research considers quantitative proteomics. She is particularly interested in protein expression patterns and how these are related to human disease.
Go to Profile#1275
Suranganie Dharmawardhane
#112493
Overall Influence
Suranganie Dharmawardhane Flanagan is a Sri Lankan molecular biologist and biochemist. She is a professor of biochemistry at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine. Education In 1980, Dharmawardhane completed a B.S. at University of Colombo. She earned a M.S. at Northeastern University in 1984. She completed a Ph.D. at University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1987. Her dissertation was titled Light-stimulated transplasmalemma electron transport in oat mesophyll cells. She conducted postdoctoral training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine under .
Go to Profile#1276
Catherine E. Badgley
#111720
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Catherine E. Badgley is an American paleontologist and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The focus of Badgley's research is the evolution and fossil history and biodiversity of mammals, especially the role of mountains in driving biodiversity patterns. She has also pursued research on organic agriculture and global food supplies, for which she has received considerable public attention. Badgley has also authored a children's book, Pippa's First Summer, with artist Bonnie Miljour.
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Daniela Schiller
#85840
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Daniela Schiller is a neuroscientist who leads the Affective Neuroscience Lab at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She is best known for her work on memory reconsolidation, and on modification of emotional learning and memory.
Go to Profile#1278
Viviana Gradinaru
#77419
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (43 years)
Viviana Grădinaru is a Romanian-American neuroscientist who is a Professor of Neuroscience and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. She develops neurotechnologies including optogenetics CLARITY tissue clearing, and gene delivery vectors. She has been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award. In 2019 she was a finalist for the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. In 2020 she was awarded a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science by the Vilcek Foundation.
Go to Profile#1279
Alice F. Tryon
#108762
Overall Influence
1920 - 2009 (89 years)
Alice Faber Tryon was an American botanist who specialized in the systematics of ferns and other spore-dispersed plants . She had two general areas of interest in her work, first incorporating the use of spore surface patterns into the understanding of fern diversity and systematics, and second the fern family Pteridaceae.
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Janet S. Butel
#54900
Overall Influence
Janet S Butel is the Chairman and Distinguished Service Professor in the molecular virology and microbiology department at Baylor College of Medicine. Her area of expertise is on polyomavirus pathogenesis of infections and disease. She has more than 120 publications on PubMed. She also has 6 publications in Nature, which is considered one of the most prestigious science journals. She is a member of 9 different organizations and has 13 honors and awards.
Go to Profile#1281
Sheila Nirenberg
#43691
Overall Influence
Sheila Nirenberg is an American neuroscientist and professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. She works in the field of neural coding, developing new kinds of prosthetic devices that can communicate directly with the brain, and new kinds of smart robots. She is a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” award and has been the subject of, or featured in, several documentaries for her technology for treating blindness.
Go to Profile#1282
Kristen Knutson
#76315
Overall Influence
Kristen Knutson is an associate professor of neurology, working at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. With researchers from the University of Surrey, she studied the mortality rate of half a million people over 6.5 years and concluded that people who self identify as "definite evening type" had a 10 percent higher mortality rate than those who identified as "definite morning type". It was the first study of its type to look into the mortality rate of night owls.
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Mary Lidstrom
#96206
Overall Influence
Mary E. Lidstrom is a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Washington. She also holds the Frank Jungers Chair of Engineering, in the Department of Chemical Engineering. She currently is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Bacteriology and FEMS Microbial Ecology.
Go to Profile#1284
Galit Alter
#116130
Overall Influence
Galit Alter is an immunologist and virologist, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and group leader at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. She is known for her work on the expansion of particular natural killer cell subtypes in response to HIV-1 infection. She has also contributed to the understanding of how SARS-CoV-2 antibody titers correlate with sustained humoral protection, including identifying coordinated immune cell-antibody signatures that may predict COVID-19 infection outcome.
Go to Profile#1285
Nagasuma Chandra
#41123
Overall Influence
Nagasuma Chandra is an Indian structural biologist, biochemist and a professor at the department of biochemistry of the Indian Institute of Science. She is known for her studies on Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for her contributions to biosciences in 2008.
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Tamsin Ford
#95774
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Tamsin Jane Ford CBE, FRCPsych, FMedSci is a British psychiatrist specialising in children's mental health. Since 2019 she has been based at the University of Cambridge where she is now Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Fellow of Hughes Hall. She has been heavily involved with the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management programme, created by Carolyn Webster-Stratton, which aims to raise and improve children's mental health in primary schools across Devon. Her work also ties in with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire , cre...
Go to Profile#1287
Sarah Hake
#114554
Overall Influence
Sarah Hake is an American plant developmental biologist who directs the USDA's Plant Gene Expression Center in Albany, CA. In 2009 she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Melanie Stiassny
#114643
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Melanie Lisa Jane Stiassny is the Axelrod Research Curator of Ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History. Her research interests focus on freshwater biodiversity documentation and systematic ichthyology in the Old World tropics, including tropical Africa and Madagascar. She has published broadly on the biogeography conservation and systematics of teleosts.
Go to Profile#1289
Rosa Beddington
#99492
Overall Influence
1956 - 2001 (45 years)
Rosa Susan Penelope Beddington FRS was a British biologist whose career had a major impact on developmental biology. Education and early life Beddington was born on 23 March 1956, the second daughter of Roy and Anna Beddington . She was raised with her elder sister, Pippa Beddington. She attended Sherborne School for Girls where she not only excelled in academics, but in her arts and sports programs as well. She later attended Brasenose College, Oxford; from 1974, obtaining a First in Physiological Sciences in 1977. Beddington embarked on the study of anterior-posterior axial patterning in m...
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Melania Cristescu
#65569
Overall Influence
Melania Elena Cristescu is a Romanian–Canadian biologist and ecologist. She is an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Ecological Genomics at McGill University and the Co-Editor of Genome.
Go to Profile#1291
Sheena Josselyn
#86790
Overall Influence
Sheena Josselyn is a Canadian neuroscientist and a full professor of psychology and physiology at Hospital for Sick Children and The University of Toronto. Josselyn studies the neural basis of memory, specifically how the brain forms and stores memories in rodent models. She has made critical contributions to the field of Neuronal Memory Allocation and the study of engrams.
Go to Profile#1292
Yi Zuo
#112893
Overall Influence
Yi Zuo is a neuroscience professor and researcher born in China. She studies molecular, cellular and developmental biology. Zuo is currently an associate professor of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz , where she also heads a research lab.
Go to Profile#1293
Edwina Cornish
#77300
Overall Influence
Edwina Cecily Cornish, AO, FTSE is an Australian biologist and academic, specialising in biotechnology. Between 2012 and 2016 she was Provost and Senior Vice-President of Monash University. She was previously Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Adelaide and then at Monash University.
Go to Profile#1294
Kathryn North
#103375
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Kathryn Nance North is a paediatric physician, neurologist, and clinical geneticist. In 2013, she was appointed Director of the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and was named the David Danks Professor of Child Health Research at the University of Melbourne. In 2012, North was appointed chair of the National Health and Medical Research Council Research Committee. In 2014, she was appointed vice chair of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health and co-chair of its Clinical Working Group.
Go to Profile#1295
Daphne Maurer
#56978
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Daphne Maurer is a Canadian developmental psychologist and professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University. She is known for her work on the development of visual perception in humans, starting in infancy.
Go to Profile#1296
Fátima Carneiro
#97951
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Fátima Carneiro is a Portuguese pathologist. Since 2001 she has been director of the Pathological Anatomy Service at the University Hospital Centre of São João in Porto. In September 2018 she was voted first in a list of the hundred "Best & Brightest" pathologists in the world, by the magazine, The Pathologist.
Go to Profile#1297
Danielle Posthuma
#116803
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Danielle Posthuma is a Dutch behavior and psychiatric geneticist who specializes in statistical genetics. She is a University Research Chair professor at VU University Amsterdam, where she is also head of the Department of Complex Trait Genetics. She has been a member of the Young Academy of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences since 2005. She is known for studying the genetics of psychiatric and cognitive traits, including schizophrenia, neuroticism, Alzheimer's disease, insomnia, as well as genetics of intelligence, which she first became interested in researching in the 1990s. In 2019 Posth...
Go to Profile#1298
Ana Domingos
#78674
Overall Influence
Ana I. Domingos is a Portuguese neuroscientist specialising in the treatment of obesity independently of food intake. Domingos is a full Professor of Neuroscience at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Domingos is also a fellow, tutor and the director of studies in medicine at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
Go to Profile#1299
Elizabeth W. Jones
#92375
Overall Influence
1939 - 2008 (69 years)
Elizabeth Winifred Jones was an American geneticist and professor at Carnegie Mellon University . Education Jones earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1960 and her Ph.D. in genetics in 1964, both from the University of Washington. She worked with Herschel L. Roman for her Ph.D., which was the first ever granted by the University of Washington in genetics. She went on to complete her postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#1300
Lauren Esposito
#101218
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Lauren Esposito is the assistant curator and Schlinger chair of Arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences. She is the co-founder of the network 500 Queer Scientists. Early life and education Esposito was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. She kept a collection of insects in egg cartons, and her first grade science project looked at the Mendelian genetics of pigeon colours. Esposito earned her bachelor's degree in biology at the University of Texas at El Paso in 2003. She became interested in scorpions during a National Science Foundation placement at the American Museum of Natural History.
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