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,
#1301
Maria Alma Solis
#95719
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Maria Alma Solis is a entomologist at the Systematic Entomology Laboratory of the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Early life Maria Alma Solis was born on February 9, 1956, in Corpus Christi, Texas, and raised in Brownsville, Texas. She graduated from Brownsville High School in 1974. Dr. Solis began her studies at Texas Southmost College, then transferred to the University of Texas at Austin and majored in science education. She earned her master's degree in biological sciences with Larry Gilbert at UT Austin and her PhD in insect systematics at the Departm...
Go to Profile#1302
Mary Gillham
#96036
Overall Influence
1921 - 2013 (92 years)
Mary Eleanor Gillham MBE was a British naturalist, university lecturer, and writer, who was resident for many years in Gwaelod y Garth and then Radyr, in Cardiff, Wales until her death. Although born in a London suburb, and serving five wartime years in the Women's Land Army working on multiple farms, Mary Gillham spent much of her time in Wales. As a post-war student in the University of Wales at Aberystwyth and Bangor, she gained a degree in agriculture, a first-class honours in botany, and a PhD in island ecology. She lectured in the universities of Exeter , Massey , Melbourne , Kano , and...
Go to Profile#1303
Laura Guzmán Dávalos
#106912
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Laura Guzmán Dávalos is a Mexican mycologist, biologist and lichenologist. She has been the head of the Botany and Zoology Department at the University of Guadalajara from 1994–1998. From 2007 to 2014, she served as the general coordinator of the UdeG doctoral program in ecology, biosystematics, and natural and agricultural resources management.
Go to Profile#1304
Carden Wallace
#96741
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Carden Crea Wallace is an Australian scientist who was the curator/director of the Museum of Tropical Queensland from 1987 to 2003. She is an expert on corals having written a "revision of the Genus Acropora". Wallace was part of a team that discovered mass spawning of coral in 1984.
Go to Profile#1305
Catherine E. Costello
#115482
Overall Influence
Catherine E. Costello is the William Fairfield Warren distinguished professor in the department of biochemistry, Cell Biology and Genomics, and the director of the Center for Biomedical Mass Spectrometry at the Boston University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#1306
Anita Buma
#46823
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Anita Gerry Johanna Buma is a Dutch Antarctic researcher, best known for her work on ecophysiology of marine microalgae. She was the first Dutch female researcher in Antarctica. Early life and education Buma obtained her Biology master's degree at the University of Groningen . She then moved to the Royal Institute for Sea Research where she began her PhD research on Antarctic phytoplankton growth and species composition. Upon invitation by Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar und Meeresforschung Bremerhaven, Germany, she participated in two field campaigns to the Fram Strait, high Arctic, in 1985, where she studied phytoplankton abundance and species composition.
Go to Profile#1307
Elisabeth Peveling
#103708
Overall Influence
1932 - 1993 (61 years)
Elisabeth Peveling was a German botanist. Her scientific research was largely specialized in the cytology and ultrastructure of lichens. Early life and education Peveling was born on 31 March 1932 in . She studied botany, zoology, mathematics and physics at the universities of Münster, Innsbruck and Göttingen, earning a master's degree in 1958 and a PhD in 1960. Both of her theses dealt with karyology in the plant family Cucurbitaceae. She was a research assistant at the Botanical Institute in the University of Münster.
Go to Profile#1308
Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan
#89491
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan is a South African vertebrate paleontologist known for her expertise and developments in the study of the microstructure of fossil teeth and bones of extinct and extant vertebrates. She was the head of the Department of Biological Sciences , at the University of Cape Town from 2012 to 2015 .
Go to Profile#1309
Nathalie Cabrol
#52501
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Nathalie A. Cabrol is a French American astrobiologist specializing in planetary science. Cabrol studies ancient lakes on Mars, and undertakes high-altitude scientific expeditions in the Central Andes of Chile as the principal investigator of the "High Lakes Project" funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute . There, with her team, she documents life's adaptation to extreme environments, the effect of rapid climate change on lake ecosystems and habitats, its geobiological signatures, and relevance to planetary exploration.
Go to Profile#1310
Maria Jasin
#117155
Overall Influence
#1311
Anna Macleod
#70274
Overall Influence
1917 - 2004 (87 years)
Anna MacGillivray Macleod was a Scottish biochemist and academic, an authority on brewing and distilling. She was a professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. She was the world's first female Professor of Brewing and Biochemistry.
Go to Profile#1312
Anne Bertolotti
#104844
Overall Influence
Anne Bertolotti is a French biochemist and cell biologist who works as Programme Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. In 2022 she was appointed Head of the MRC LMB's Neurobiology Division. She is known for her research into the cellular defences against misfolded proteins and the mechanisms underlying their deposition, the molecular problem causative of neurodegenerative diseases.
Go to Profile#1313
Sam Giles
#94301
Overall Influence
Sam Giles is a palaeobiologist at the University of Birmingham. Her research combines modern imaging with fossils to understand the evolution of life, in particular that of early fish, and in 2015 "rewrote" the vertebrate family tree. She was a 2017 L'Oréal-UNESCO Rising Star and won the 2019 Geological Society of London Lyell Fund.
Go to Profile#1314
Annette Oxenius
#115767
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Annette Oxenius is a Swiss scientist who is a professor of immunology at ETH Zurich. Her research considers host-pathogen interactions and how the immune system responds to pathogenic infections. She was awarded the Cloëtta Prize in 2022 and elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2023.
Go to Profile#1315
Julia K. Baum
#83783
Overall Influence
Julia Kathleen Baum is a Canadian marine biologist. In 2017, she was named to the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. She was awarded a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation in 2017 and an EWR Steacie Fellowship in 2018.
Go to Profile#1316
Joyce Harper
#105488
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Joyce Harper is Professor of Reproductive Science at the Institute for Women's Health, University College London where she heads the Reproductive Science and Society group. She is director of the Embryology and PGD Academy and Global Women Connected.
Go to Profile#1317
Annette Beck-Sickinger
#84631
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Annette Gabriele Beck-Sickinger is a German chemist and biologist. She has been a full professor of Biochemistry and Bioorganic Chemistry at the University of Leipzig since 1999. Career Annette G. Beck-Sickinger studied chemistry and biology at the University of Tübingen and received her Ph.D. under the supervision of Günther Jung .
Go to Profile#1318
Susan D. Healy
#27658
Overall Influence
Susan Denise Healy FRSE professor of biology at the University of St. Andrews, specialist in cognitive evolution and behavioural studies of birds and understanding the neurological basis of this. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021.
Go to Profile#1319
Ellen Leibenluft
#113661
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Ellen Leibenluft is an American psychiatrist and physician-scientist researching the brain mechanisms mediating bipolar disorder and severe irritability in children and adolescents. She is a senior investigator and chief of the mood dysregulation and neuroscience section at the National Institute of Mental Health.
Go to Profile#1320
Melanie Wall
#106880
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Melanie Marie Wall is an American psychiatric biostatistician, psychometrician, and mental health data scientist who works at Columbia University as a professor in the departments of biostatistics and psychiatry, and as director of Mental Health Data Science, a joint project of the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene, and New York State Psychiatric Institute. Her research has included topics such as grief and depression, eating disorders, marijuana use and abuse, and correlations between school performance and athletic activity, studied using latent variable models, spatial analysis, and longitudinal data.
Go to Profile#1321
Katie Ewer
#94837
Overall Influence
Katie Jane Ewer is a British immunologist and Professor of Vaccine Immunology at the University of Oxford's Jenner Institute. Early life and education When she did not get into medical school, Ewer pursued a career in biomedical science and became interested in infectious diseases. She was interested in a career in biology for she was "fascinated by seemingly endless processes that occur in our cells and organs every second of our lives without us knowing about it. Ewer earned an undergraduate degree in biomedical science, which included a year of microbiology training. She then began working ...
Go to Profile#1322
Nina Fefferman
#24105
Overall Influence
Nina H. Fefferman is an American evolutionary biologist, epidemiologist, and ecologist at the University of Tennessee for the Departments of Ecology and Evolution & Mathematics. Her research focuses on the mathematics of epidemiology, evolutionary & behavioral ecology, and conservation biology. She studies how individual behaviors can affect an entire population.
Go to Profile#1323
Dyann Wirth
#86617
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Dyann F. Wirth is an American immunologist. She is currently the Richard Pearson Strong Professor of Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Wirth is one of the world's leading malariologists, dealing with how the genus Plasmodium has evolved in terms of population biology, drug resistance, and antigenicity. The Wirth laboratory combines the expertise of the Harvard School of Public Health, the Broad Institute, and international collaborators for malaria research and training in public health.
Go to Profile#1324
Cynthia Moss
#31197
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Cynthia Jane Moss is an American ethologist and conservationist, wildlife researcher, and writer. Her studies have concentrated on the demography, behavior, social organization, and population dynamics of the African elephants of Amboseli. She is the director of the Amboseli Elephant Research Project, and is the program director and trustee for the Amboseli Trust for Elephants .
Go to Profile#1325
Cheryl Kerfeld
#108583
Overall Influence
Cheryl Ann Kerfeld is an American bioengineer who is Hannah Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University. She holds a joint position at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her research considers bioinformatics, cellular imaging and structural biology.
Go to Profile#1326
Bita Moghaddam
#90109
Overall Influence
Bita Moghaddam is an Iranian-American neuroscientist and author. She is currently the Ruth Matarazzo Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience at Oregon Health & Science University. Moghaddam investigates the neuronal processes underlying emotion and cognition as a first step to designing strategies to treat and prevent brain illnesses.
Go to Profile#1327
Anila Paparisto
#64504
Overall Influence
Anila Paparisto is an entomologist and taxonomist from Albania, who was appointed in 2021 as Vice Rector for Teaching at the University of Tirana. She is also Professor in Invertebrate Zoology and Teaching Didactics there. Her career began at the university in 1994 and in 2011 was promoted to professor. Her research has focussed on invasive species in Albania, in particular in riverine environments. She is a member of the Academy of Sciences of Albania. She is a board member of the Quality Assurance Agency in Higher Education Board in Albania.
Go to Profile#1328
Elli Leadbeater
#59991
Overall Influence
Ellouise "Elli" Leadbeater is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist in the UK. In 2019 she was appointed Professor of Ecology and Evolution at Royal Holloway, University of London. Education and career Leadbeater was educated at the University of Edinburgh where she was awarded a Bachelor of Science in Biology in 2001 and Leiden University where she did a MSc in Evolutionary and Ecological Science in 2004. She was awarded her PhD in 2008 at Queen Mary University of London having looked at "Social information use in foraging bumblebees". Leadbeater was a research fellow at the Institute of Z...
Go to Profile#1329
Lisa Curran
#56542
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Lisa Curran is an American tropical forester, and Roger and Cynthia Lang Professor in Environment & Anthropology, at Stanford University. Education Curran graduated from Harvard University, and Princeton University with a Ph.D.
Go to Profile#1330
Nina Buchmann
#117379
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Nina Buchmann is a German ecologist known for her research on the physiology of plants and the impact of plants on biogeochemical cycling. She is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and an elected fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
Go to Profile#1331
Carolyn Burns
#54001
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Dame Carolyn Waugh Burns is a New Zealand ecologist specialising in lakes. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Otago. Early life, family, and education Burns was born in Lincoln, New Zealand, the daughter of Ruth Alvina Burns and Malcolm McRae Burns, an agricultural scientist. She was educated at Christchurch Girls' High School, before studying zoology at the University of Canterbury, from where she graduated Bachelor of Science with first-class honours in 1962. She completed a PhD at the University of Toronto in 1966, with her thesis titled The feeding behaviour of Daphnia un...
Go to Profile#1332
Helen V Worthington
#117938
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#1333
Alexandra Durr
#118061
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
#1334
Stefanie N. Vogel
#93571
Overall Influence
Stefanie Nucci Vogel is an American physician-scientist, microbiologist, and immunologist. She is a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Life Vogel was born October 16, 1951, in Washington, D.C. She graduated from Regina High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, in 1968. From 1969 to 1972, Vogel was a part-time research assistant in the University of Maryland, College Park computer science center and the department of chemistry under James McDonald Stewart. She completed a B.S. with honors in the department of microbiology at the University of Maryland, College Park in January 1972.
Go to Profile#1335
Vivienne Cassie Cooper
#108834
Overall Influence
1926 - 2021 (95 years)
Una Vivienne Cassie Cooper was a New Zealand planktologist and botanist. Early life Cassie Cooper was born on 29 September 1926 in the Auckland suburb of Epsom to Annie Eveline Bell and her husband, Kenneth Dellow. She was educated at Takapuna Grammar School, where her father was headmaster from 1935. She received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from Auckland University College, and her PhD from Victoria University College.
Go to Profile#1336
Helen Ranney
#52105
Overall Influence
1920 - 2010 (90 years)
Helen Margaret Ranney was an American doctor and hematologist who made significant contributions to research on sickle-cell anemia. Early life Ranney was born in Summer Hill, Cayuga County, New York, where her parents ran a dairy farm. Her mother was a teacher and both her parents encouraged her in her studies and pursuing a professional career. She attended a one-room school as a child, and later attended Barnard College with initial plans to study law; however, it was here that she decided to study medicine, saying "Medicine attempts to fix what it studies." She initially faced barriers ...
Go to Profile#1337
Aleksandra Filipovska
#113167
Overall Influence
Aleksandra Filipovska is a Professor, Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology and NHMRC Senior Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, heading a research group at the Telethon Kids Institute. Specializing in biochemistry and molecular biology, she has made contributions to the understanding of human mitochondrial genetics in health and disease.
Go to Profile#1338
Karen Bjorndal
#92747
Overall Influence
Karen Anne Bjorndal is an American biologist focusing in nutritional ecology, with an emphasis on vertebrate herbivores and the biology of sea turtles. She is a Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Florida and Director of the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research .
Go to Profile#1339
Julie Forman-Kay
#107068
Overall Influence
Julie Forman-Kay is a scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children and professor at University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the dynamics, interactions, structures, and functions of intrinsically disordered proteins.
Go to Profile#1340
Lone Gram
#104970
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Lone Gram is Danish microbiologist known for her work in bacterial physiology, microbial communication, and biochemicals that originate from bacterial cultures. She is an elected member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and has received the Order of the Dannebrog.
Go to Profile#1341
Anelis Kaiser
#98385
Overall Influence
Anelis Kaiser is professor of gender studies at MINT, University of Freiburg, Germany. She is also on the lecturer within the social psychology and social neuroscience department at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Along with Isabelle Dussauge, Kaiser was a guest editor of a special issue on Neuroscience and sex/gender of the journal Neuroethics, they also co-founded The NeuroGenderings Network together.
Go to Profile#1342
Alison M. Bell
#84753
Overall Influence
Alison M. Bell is an American ecologist who studies animal behaviour at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She has focused on the evolution of and mechanisms that underpin animal personality. In 2020, she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#1343
Mayim Bialik
#39399
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Mayim Chaya Bialik is an American actress, game show host, and author. From 1991 to 1995, she played the title character of the NBC sitcom Blossom. From 2010 to 2019, she played neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, for which she was nominated four times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2015 and 2017.
Go to Profile#1344
Rebecca Doerge
#75700
Overall Influence
Rebecca Whitbeck Doerge is an American researcher in statistical bioinformatics, known for her research on quantitative traits. She is currently the provost at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She was previously the Trent and Judith Anderson Distinguished Professor of Statistics at Purdue University and then dean of the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon University, with joint appointments in the departments of biology and statistics.
Go to Profile#1345
Tracy Teal
#81796
Overall Influence
Tracy Teal is an American bioinformatician and the executive director of Data Carpentry. She is known for her work in open science and biomedical data science education. Education and early career Teal received her Bachelors of Science in Cybernetics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1997 and later received her Master of Arts in Organismal Biology, Ecology, and Evolution in 1999. There, she worked in the laboratory of Charles Taylor, studying how the evolution of language is impacted by the way people learn it. She then earned her PhD from the California Institute of Technology in Computation and Neural Systems in 2007.
Go to Profile#1346
Signe Normand
#103124
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Signe Normand is a Danish biologist and educator, specializing in vegetation ecology. Since February 2014, she has been an assistant professor at Aarhus University specializing in Danish flora and vegetation. In March 2015, in recognition for her research on vegetation in the Arctic tundra, she received an International Rising Talent Fellowship, one of the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science.
Go to Profile#1347
Lorene Rogers
#39208
Overall Influence
1914 - 2009 (95 years)
Lorene Lane Rogers was an American biochemist and educator who served as the 21st President of the University of Texas at Austin. She has been described as the first woman in the United States to lead a major research university.
Go to Profile#1348
Roxana Moslehi
#78359
Overall Influence
Roxana Moslehi is an Iranian-born genetic epidemiologist. Her research is on cancer and cancer precursors, including work on radiation-induced cancer of the eyes, and ethnic differences in breast cancer incidence. Born in Iran and raised there and in Canada, she is an associate professor in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University at Albany in New York state.
Go to Profile#1349
Lihadh Al-Gazali
#87238
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Professor Lihadh Al-Gazali MBChB MSc FRCP FRCPCH is a professor in clinical genetics and paediatrics. Her main area of interest is identifying new inherited disorders in Arab populations clinically and at the molecular level.
Go to Profile#1350
Martha Herbert
#77603
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Martha Herbert is an American physician and assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and pediatric neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Herbert is also director of the TRANSCEND program at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging.
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