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,

#1551

Trista Vick-Majors

#67990

Overall Influence

Trista Vick-Majors is an American Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences at Michigan Tech. She is an Antarctic biogeochemist and microbial ecologist, best known for her work showing that microorganisms are present under the Antarctic ice sheet.

#1552

Silvia Paracchini

#79206

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Silvia Paracchini FRSE is a geneticist who researches the contribution of genetic variation to neurodevelopmental traits such as dyslexia and human handedness. Education As an undergraduate, Paracchini studied Biological Sciences at the University of Pavia, Italy. During this time she undertook an ERASMUS scholarship project at the Technical University of Denmark. She obtained her DPhil in Human Genetics from the University of Oxford in 2003.

#1553

Sarah Wyatt

#121917

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Sarah Wyatt is an American, plant molecular biologist. She is a Professor in the Department of Environmental and Plant Biology at Ohio University, as well as director of the Ohio University Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Wyatt's research interests include molecular biology, genomics, and signaling events. She is considered one of the world's experts on gravitational signaling in plants, and some of her recent research includes an experiment on board the International Space Station .

#1554

Jane Grimwood

#96391

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Jane Grimwood is a British microbiologist. Early life and education Grimwood was born in England. Her father was a chemist, and she always wanted to be a scientist as a child. Grimwood was awarded her B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. She did postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford, University of San Francisco and Dartmouth College.

#1555

Diane E. Pataki

#103491

Overall Influence

Diane E. Pataki is a Foundation Professor and Director of the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. She is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Ecological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#1556

Gloria Montenegro

#115629

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Gloria del Carmen Montenegro Rizzardini is a botanist, biologist, academic and scientist. She is Professor of Botany at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She won the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 1998. She has undertaken pioneering work in botany and conservation of native flora, using scientific approaches to protect plant ecosystems.

#1557

Rita Casadio

#124088

Overall Influence

Rita Casadio is an Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry/Biophysics in the Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology at the University of Bologna. Career She earned her degree in Physics at the University of Bologna, Italy. In 1987, she began her academic career as an Assistant Professor of Biophysics at the University of Bologna, later becoming a full professor of Biochemistry/Biophysics in 2001. Her research primarily focuses on membrane and protein biophysics, as well as computer modeling of biological processes, including protein folding, stability and interactions.

#1558

Phoebe S. Leboy

Phoebe S. Leboy

#121258

Overall Influence

1936 - 2012 (76 years)

Phoebe Starfield Leboy was an American biochemist and advocate for women in science. Education Leboy earned a bachelor's degree in zoology from Swarthmore College in 1957 and a doctorate in biochemistry from Bryn Mawr College in 1962.

#1559

Laura Soucek

#112114

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Laura Soucek is a Group Leader at VHIO , Research Professor at ICREA, and CEO of Peptomyc S.L. She works on the Myc oncoprotein, the deregulation of which occurs during almost all cancers. Soucek has designed a dominant negative variant, Omomyc, which allows her to investigate the benefits of inhibiting Myc in cancer.

#1560

Patricia Janak

#76104

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Patricia Janak is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies the biological basis of behavior through associative learning. Janak applies this research to pathological behaviors, such as addiction and posttraumatic stress disorder, to improve understanding of how stimuli affect relapse and responses.

#1561

Tannishtha Reya

#84990

Overall Influence

Tannishtha Reya is an Indian-born American cell and developmental biologist working in cancer research at Columbia University in New York. She has received numerous awards, including an NIH Director's Pioneer Award in 2009 and an NCI Outstanding Investigator Award in 2015. Reya is particularly known for co-authoring an influential publication in 2001 coining the term "cancer stem cell" to describe a cancer cell that mirrors the properties of stem cells of healthy organs in the context of leukaemias or solid tumours.

#1562

Julie Denslow

#127517

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Julie Sloan Denslow is an American botanist, ecologist and biologist. She grew up in South Florida, and always loved nature. She graduated from Coral Gables Senior High School in 1960. She has contributed to the field of ecology through her work with and research of tropical ecosystems. Earlier in her career, she spent significant time in the field in tropical locations such as Costa Rica and Panama, as well as in temperate locations in Louisiana. and later on in her career she worked more in the office and classroom, but still spent the occasional day in the field. She has focused on resea...

#1563

Elisabeth A. Murray

#128226

Overall Influence

#1564

Lotte Søgaard-Andersen

#125258

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Lotte Søgaard-Andersen is a Danish microbiologist and molecular geneticist who researches cell signaling and regulation of the cell cycle. She works at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology as director and is an elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and American Academy of Microbiology.

#1565

Lisa Beal

#75439

Overall Influence

Lisa M. Beal is a professor at the University of Miami known for her work on the Agulhas Current. She is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans. Education and career Beal grew up in the United Kingdom, and was first attracted to aeronautical engineering as an undergraduate at University of Southampton before changing to oceanography. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Southampton working on the Agulhas Current. Following her Ph.D. she did postdoctoral work at Columbia University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography before moving to the University of Miami in 2003.

#1566

Laurie Marker

#77291

Overall Influence

Laurie Marker is an American zoologist, researcher, author, educator, and one of the world's foremost cheetah experts, who founded the Cheetah Conservation Fund in 1990. As executive director of CCF, among many endeavors, Marker helps rehabilitate cheetahs and reintroduce them to the wild, performs research into conservation, biology and ecology, educates groups around the world, and works toward a holistic approach to saving the cheetah and its ecosystems in the wild. Before her work with CCF, Marker's career started to take off at the Wildlife Safari in the U.S., where her interest with ca...

#1567

Terry Jernigan

#92119

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Terry Lynne Jernigan is a neuropsychologist and the director of the Center for Human Development at University of California, San Diego. Education Jernigan graduated from University of California, Irvine with a bachelor's degree before earning a doctorate from University of California, Los Angeles. She interned and completed her postdoctoral research at Stanford University and Palo Alto VA Medical Center.

#1568

Dorothy Warburton

#116685

Overall Influence

1935 - 2016 (81 years)

Dorothy Pamela Warburton was a Canadian geneticist whose research focused on fetal chromosomal abnormalities and reasons for miscarriage. She died at the age of 80 on 26 April 2016 at her home in Englewood, New Jersey.

#1569

Maureen Hanson

#123869

Overall Influence

Maureen Hanson is an American molecular biologist and Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She is a joint member of the Section of Plant Biology and Director of the Center for Enervating Neuroimmune Disease. Her research concerns gene expression in chloroplasts and mitochondria, photosynthesis, and the molecular basis of the disease Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome .

#1570

Geraldine Thomas

Geraldine Thomas

#89913

Overall Influence

Geraldine Anne Thomas is a senior academic and Chair in Molecular Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Surgery & Cancer, Imperial College London. She is an active researcher in fields of tissue banking and molecular pathology of thyroid and breast cancer. Thomas is also a science communicator and has written opinion editorial pieces and provided comment to the media following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In 2015 Thomas appeared in the TV documentary series Uranium - Twisting the Dragon's Tail and was called to appear before the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission in South A...

#1571

Joanna M. Kain

#119963

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Joanna M. Jones was a phycologist, marine biologist and diver. She researched kelp forest ecology adding to the scientific knowledge on its population, reproduction, competition and growth as well as descriptions of subcanopy seaweeds found in kelp forests. She was president of the British Phycological Society from 1987 to 1988.

#1572

Barbara D. Webster

#105846

Overall Influence

Barbara Donahue Webster is an American botanist and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Davis. She is a past president of the Botanical Society of America, of which she also served as first female treasurer, and a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society for Horticultural Science. She has served as editor of the journal Madroño.

#1573

Johanna Ivaska

#121872

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Mari Johanna Ivaska is a cancer researcher and molecular cell biology academy professor in University of Turku, Finland. Early life and education Johanna Ivaska was born 1972 in Turku, Finland. Her father is emeritus analytical chemistry professor Ari Ivaska. She did her master's studies in University of Turku. Her PhD on collagen-binding integrins in University of Turku was give an honorary mention for an excellent PhD thesis by the Faculty of Medicine, University of Turku in 2001. After receiving a PhD she moved to London, UK for a postdoctoral work on investigating how integrins and protein kinases work together in cancer migration at Cancer Research UK with professor Peter J.

#1574

Lisa Hensley

#51970

Overall Influence

Lisa Ellen Hensley is the associate director of science at the Office of the Chief Scientist, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Integrated Research Facility in Frederick, Maryland. She was previously a civilian microbiologist in the virology division of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases . Hensley is one of the premier researchers of some of the world's most dangerous infections, including Ebola hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, the coronavirus diseases Severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome , and smallpox....

#1575

Gina R. Poe

#110873

Overall Influence

Gina R. Poe is an American neuroscientist specializing in the study of sleep and its effect on memory and learning. Her findings have shown that the absence of noradrenaline and low levels of serotonin during sleep spindles allow the brain to form new memories during REM, as well as restructure old memory circuits to allow for more learning during later waking periods. She currently works as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles .

#1576

Lorraine S. Symington

#124850

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Lorraine S. Symington is a British-American geneticist. As the Harold S. Ginsberg Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University, her laboratory uses genetic, biochemical and molecular approaches to understand mechanisms of homology-directed double-strand break repair using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as an experimental system.

#1577

Erica Bree Rosenblum

#111396

Overall Influence

Erica Bree Rosenblum is an American herpetologist and evolutionary biologist. She is a Professor of Global Change Biology in the department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California Berkeley. She is also the director of Berkeley Connect, a mentorship program for undergraduate students. Rosenblum’s main research areas include a fungus that causes high mortality rates in frogs and evolution in lizards in White Sands, New Mexico.

#1578

Margaret T. May

#103462

Overall Influence

Margaret T. May is Professor of Medical Statistics at the University of Bristol, and specialises in prognostic modelling and HIV epidemiology. May has a master's degree from the University of Cambridge, and a master's degree and PhD from the University of Bristol.

#1579

Marnie Blewitt

#88040

Overall Influence

Marnie Blewitt is head of a division at WEHI, which focuses on X-inactivation, and is engaged in research on the role of polycomb-group proteins in hematopoietic stem cell function. Scientific career

#1580

Katie Hinde

#97555

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Katherine Hinde is an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Senior Sustainability Scientist at Arizona State University, where she researches lactation. She is also a science writer and science communicator.

#1581

Ann Bartuska

#79617

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Ann M. Bartuska is an ecologist and biologist. She is a senior advisor at Resources for the Future and a former Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics at the United States Department of Agriculture and former USDA Chief Scientist.

#1582

Ellen Rothenberg

#125974

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Ellen V. Rothenberg is an American biologist who is an Edward B. Lewis Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology. She investigates the molecular mechanisms that underpin lineage choice. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

#1583

Suzanne Ildstad

#113927

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Suzanne Tollerud Ildstad is an American physician and medical researcher. She is the Chief Scientific Officer and founding CEO of Talaris Therapeutics . She also serves the Board of Directors. She is also the Jewish Hospital Distinguished Professor of Transplantation Research, Director of the Institute for Cellular Therapeutics, Professor in the Department of Surgery with associate appointments in the Departments of Physiology & Biophysics and Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.

#1584

Anissa Abi-Dargham

#77201

Overall Influence

Anissa Abi-Dargham is an American psychiatrist and researcher. She is a psychiatry professor and vice-chair of research at Stony Brook University and professor emerita at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

#1585

Anna Chao Pai

#54832

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Anna Chao Pai is an American geneticist and professor emerita at Montclair State University. Biography Anna Chao was born in Beijing, China. Her maternal grandfather was the Northeast China-based warlord Zhang Zuolin, who was assassinated by the Japanese in 1928. Following the Japanese invasion of Northeast China in 1931, Chao's parents fled the region, first to Beijing where she was born, and then to the United States. They would make only one more visit to China together as a family, in 1939, and after the Communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, her parents had no further desire to return to their country of birth.

#1586

Lorraine Tyler

#124676

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Lorraine Komisarjevsky Tyler , is a British neuroscientist. She is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. Biography Tyler graduated with a BA in Psychology at the University of Leicester in 1966 and completed her PhD in Cognition and Communication at the University of Chicago in 1977. From 1980 to 1985 she was the senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics before, in 1990, joining Birkbeck College as Professor of Psychology. In 1998 Tyler joined the University of Cambridge as a MRC Research Professor before becoming taking up her current Professorship at the university in 2011.

#1587

Lorina Naci

#112485

Overall Influence

Dr. Lorina Naci is an Albanian-Canadian psychologist and neuroscientist born in Tirana. She is a laureate of the "Young International Talent" scholarship of the L'Oréal-UNESCO program for women and science in 2017. In 2023 she was elected a fellow of Trinity College Dublin.

#1588

Susan Wijffels

#90143

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Susan Elizabeth Anne Wijffels is an Australian oceanographer employed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ; she formerly worked from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia. Wijffels specialises in quantifying global ocean change over the past 50 years, including its anatomy and drivers. She is recognised for her international and national leadership of the Global Ocean Observing System. She is regarded as an expert in the Indonesian Throughflow and its role in global climate.

#1589

Liisa Galea

#119561

Overall Influence

Liisa Ann Margaret Galea is a Canadian neuroscientist who is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. She is a member of the Centre for Brain Health and Director of the Graduate Programme in Neuroscience. Her research considers the impact of hormones on brain health and behaviour.

#1590

Melinda Beck

#91248

Overall Influence

Melinda Annetta Beck is an American nutritionist and professor at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she also serves as interim department chair. Her research investigates the relationship between nutrition and immune response to infectious disease. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022.

#1591

Eugenia Wang

#122577

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Eugenia Wang is the Gheens Endowed Chair on Aging at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. Her primary focus is researching the genetic aspect of aging in humans. She was among the first researchers who discovered the parts of the human genome that could either accelerate or slow the process of apoptosis.

#1592

Hao Wu

#83126

Overall Influence

Hao Wu is a Chinese American biochemist and crystallographer and the Asa and Patricia Springer Professor of Structural Biology in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. Her work focuses on molecular mechanisms of signal transduction in cell death and inflammation. She is the discoverer of signalosomes, which are large macromolecular complexes involved in cell death and in innate and adaptive immune pathways. She has established a new paradigm for signal transduction that involves higher-order protein assemblies. She has received the Pew S...

#1593

Kathryn Moore

#118350

Overall Influence

Kathryn J. Moore is a Canadian-born American cell biologist who is the Jean and David Blechman Professor of Cardiology and the founding director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. Moore's research considers the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, with a focus on the identification of novel therapeutic targets. She was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

#1594

Victoria Foe

#54015

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Victoria Elizabeth Foe is an American developmental biologist, and Research Professor at the University of Washington's Center for Cell Dynamics. She is known for her work on the development of embryos.

#1595

Molly Jahn

#104295

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Molly Jahn is an American plant geneticist and breeder and Professor of Agronomy at University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. She was Under Secretary of Research, Education and Economics in the U.S. Department of Agriculture .

#1596

Esther Ngumbi

#53911

Overall Influence

Esther Ndumi Ngumbi is a Kenyan entomologist and academic who is currently Assistant Professor of Entomology and African-American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She was awarded the 2018 Society for Experimental Biology Presidential Award.

#1597

Gabriella Campadelli-Fiume

#33447

Overall Influence

Gabriella Campadelli-Fiume is a virologist with a primary research focus on herpes simplex virus, fusion and viral entry. She is a retired professor of virology from the University of Bologna, Italy.

#1598

Marnie Halpern

#116901

Overall Influence

Marnie Halpern is the Andrew J. Thomson Professor and Chair of molecular and systems biology at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. She is a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#1599

Christina Grozinger

#119029

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Christina Grozinger is an American entomologist, the Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology at Pennsylvania State University and the director at its Center for Pollinator Research. Her main areas of expertise as a social insect biologist are the molecular, physiological, and ecological determinants that affect the health of honey bees and other pollinators. Grozinger has carried out important research into the ways in which bee stressors affect bees, and how factors such as climate change, extreme weather, pathogens, parasites, pesticides, and nutritional deficiencies are affecting worldwide pollinator decline.

#1600

Sue Clifford

#58581

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Susan Merlyn Clifford MBE co-founded Common Ground, a British organisation which campaigns to link nature with culture and the positive investment people can make in their own localities, with Angela King in 1983.

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