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,

#1601

Sheryl van Nunen

#91069

Overall Influence

Sheryl van Nunen OAM MBBS FRACP, is an Australian allergy researcher and Senior Staff Specialist in the Department of Clinical Immunology and Allergy at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, Australia, and Clinical Associate Professor at the Sydney Medical School - Northern, University of Sydney.

#1602

Catherine Pringle

#124703

Overall Influence

Catherine Mann Pringle is a distinguished research professor at the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia. She studies aquatic ecosystems and conservation. Pringle has previously served as president of the Society for Freshwater Science. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Ecological Society of America.

#1603

Vivian Pellizari

Vivian Pellizari

#110542

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Vivian Helena Pellizari is a Brazilian Antarctic scientist known for her work on establishing Antarctic microbiology in Brazil. Pellizari is the head of Department of Oceanographic Biology at Oceanographic Institute of University of São Paulo.

#1604

Bridget Stutchbury

#23031

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Bridget J. Stutchbury is a Canadian biologist, currently a Distinguished Research Professor and Canada Research Chair in Ecology and Conservation Biology at York University. She is the author of the book Silence of the Songbirds, finalist for the 2007 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction.

#1605

Lynn G. Clark

#92231

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Lynn G. Clark is an American professor of botany at Iowa State University who is an expert in tropical woody bamboos. As a high school student, Clark worked summers with grass expert Thomas Soderstrom at the National Museum of Natural History. She obtained her Ph.D. in botany working with Richard Pohl at Iowa State.

#1606

Irma Gigli

#104000

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Irma Gigli is an emeritus professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and the Walter & Mary Mischer Distinguished Professor in Molecular Medicine, Hans J. Müller-Eberhard Chair in Immunology, and Director Emeritus of the IMM Center for Immunology & Autoimmune Diseases.

#1607

Rachel Wong

#114117

Overall Influence

Rachel Wong is an American neuroscientist who is a professor of Biological Structure at the University of Washington. She studies the developmental mechanisms that determine synaptic connectivity in the central nervous system. She was elected to the National Vision Research Institute of Australia in 2018 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

#1608

Leslie A. Lyons

#82297

Overall Influence

Leslie A. Lyons is an associate professor at University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine. Career In 2002, Lyons made international headlines by analyzing the DNA of the world's first cloned cat, a kitten named Cc:, and confirming that it was indeed a true clone, a genetic copy of its mother.

#1609

M. Francesca Cotrufo

#119871

Overall Influence

M. Francesca Cotrufo is a soil ecologist who focuses her work on litter decomposition and the dynamics of soil organic matter. She is currently a Professor and Associate Head in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, as well the Senior Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Lab, at Colorado State University.

#1610

Özlem Türeci

#115559

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Özlem Türeci is a German physician, scientist and entrepreneur. In 2008, she co-founded the biotechnology company BioNTech, which in 2020 developed the first messenger RNA-based vaccine approved for use against COVID-19. Türeci has served as BioNTech's chief medical officer since 2018. Since 2021, she has been Professor of Personalized Immunotherapy at the Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Türeci and her spouse, Uğur Şahin, have won a number of awards.

#1611

Emilie Rissman

#123287

Overall Influence

Emilie Rissman is an American professor in the Biological Sciences department at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on estrogens modulate sex differences in behavior. Her research also looks at the effect of parental exposure to Bisphenol A on offspring behavior in mice.

#1612

Birgitte Kiær Ahring

#97216

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Birgitte Kiær Ahring is a Danish biologist and researcher in biofuel. Since 2008, she has been employed as a professor at the Department of Chemistry and Bioscience at Aalborg University Copenhagen.

#1613

Yanlan Mao

#115676

Overall Influence

Yanlan Mao is a British biologist who is a professor at University College London. Her research considers cell biology and the molecular mechanism that underpin tissue formation. She was awarded the Royal Microscopical Society Medal for Life Sciences in 2021.

#1614

Selin Kara

#71080

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Selin Kara is a Turkish-born chemist and biotechnologist. She is currently a full professor and head of Industrial Biotechnology section at Aarhus University. She studies biocatalysis and has been recognized for her work about deep eutectic solvents and her research regarding cofactor regeneration in biotransformations.

#1615

Elvira Cuevas

#114241

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Elvira Cuevas Viera is a Puerto Rican ecologist. She is a professor in the department of biology at University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus where she serves as director of the Center for Applied Tropical Ecology and Conservation.

#1616

Lynn Dicks

#104958

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Lynn Dicks is a conservation scientist and ecologist in the UK. She is Professor of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, and Honorary Reader at the University of East Anglia, and an expert in sustainable farming and insect conservation.

#1617

María Fernanda Ceriani

#70751

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

María Fernanda Ceriani is an Argentine biologist. She studies the neuronal mechanisms involved in the regulation of circadian rhythms, using Drosophila melanogaster as a biological model. She is the president of INIS Biotech, heads the Behavioral Genetics Laboratory at the Leloir Institute Foundation, and is a researcher with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council . Ceriani received her PhD from the University of Buenos Aires and did postdoctoral research at the Scripps Research Institute. She won a L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award in 2011.

#1618

Winifred Pennington

Winifred Pennington

#102291

Overall Influence

1915 - 2007 (92 years)

Winifred Anne Tutin FRS was a British limnologist and biologist. Life Pennington was born in Barrow-in-Furness on 8 October 1915, the daughter of Albert Roger Pennington, Post Office supervisor, and his wife, Margaret. In 1938, she graduated from the University of Reading in botany. As an undergraduate she undertook published research on algae and the ecology of mosses. Supervised by Tom Harris, she was awarded her PhD in 1941 by the University of Reading for her thesis titled 'An investigation of some problems of freshwater algae, with special reference to the process of sedimentation'. In ...

#1619

Prisca Liberali

#120821

Overall Influence

Prisca Liberali is an Italian chemist who is a senior group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research. Her research takes a systems biology approach to understand the behaviour of multi-cellular systems. She was awarded the EMBO Gold Medal and EMBO Membership in 2022.

#1620

Bissan Al-Lazikani

#108266

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Professor Bissan Al-Lazikani PhD FRSB MBCS is a data scientist and drug discoverer. She applies computational techniques to help solve critical bottlenecks in cancer drug discovery and development. Since 2021 she has been professor of genomic medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

#1621

Barbara Bachmann

#96823

Overall Influence

1924 - 1999 (75 years)

Barbara Joyce Bachmann was a lecturer at Yale University, UC Berkeley, Columbia and NYU, and is best known as director of the E. coli Genetic Stock Center and for publishing editions of the standard E. coli K-12 genetic linkage map.

#1622

Anna Traveset

#124428

Overall Influence

Anna Traveset is a Spanish ecologist, particularly known for her work on ecological interactions between plants and animals, especially on islands. Traveset is a Research Professor at the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies – IMEDEA based in Mallorca, and Collaborating Professor at the University of the Balearic Islands . In 2017, she received the Rey Jaime I Award for Environmental Protection . Furthermore, she currently holds the position of Institutional Representative of the CSIC in the Balearic Islands.

#1623

Carolien Kroeze

#130359

Overall Influence

#1624

Martine Dorais

#107432

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Martine Dorais, is a researcher with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada specializing in plant physiology. She is recognized around the world for her research on organic greenhouse production. Dorais has authored over 200 academic publications, which have been cited over 4,300 times, resulting in an h-index and i10-index of 32 and 78 respectively.

#1625

Laurie Godfrey

#110312

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Laurie R. Godfrey is an American paleontologist and physical anthropologist. She is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research has focused on the evolutionary history of the present-day lemur populations of Madagascar. An outspoken critic of creationism and advocate for the teaching of evolution in schools, she has edited three books on the subject: Scientists Confront Creationism , What Darwin Began: Modern Darwinian and Non-Darwinian Perspectives on Evolution , and Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism .

#1626

Judith K. Brown

#130439

Overall Influence

Judith K. Brown is an American phytopathologist noted for study of viruses that affect plants. In particular geminiviruses and Whitefly involved viruses. She has a PhD from the University of Arizona and teaches there. She was an associate editor of Phytopathology for three years and in 2003 a delegate for the National Academy of Sciences Frontiers in Science Symposium in Istanbul. In 2015 she became an American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow.

#1627

Munira A. Basrai

#126222

Overall Influence

Munira Adnan Basrai is an American geneticist researching genome stability and cell cycle regulation in yeast and human cancers. She is a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute. Education Basrai received a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee. Her 1992 dissertation was titled, Modes of nutrient uptake in Candida albicans: peptide transport and fluid phase endocytosis. Basrai's doctoral advisor was Jeffrey M. Becker. She completed postdoctoral research with Philip Hieter in the department of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

#1628

Carol Kumamoto

#124533

Overall Influence

Carol Kumamoto is an American microbiologist who is Professor of Molecular Biology & Microbiology at Tufts University. She investigates the filamentous growth of Candida albicans, a fungal pathogen that causes several diseases. She is also interested in how C. albicans interacts with its host during colonisation and invasive diseases. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology.

#1629

Etheresia Pretorius

#130645

Overall Influence

#1630

Barbara Franke

#130691

Overall Influence

#1631

Coral Barbas

#75535

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

María del Coral Barbas Arribas is a professor at the Universidad CEU San Pablo in Madrid, Spain who is known for her research on metabolomics and integration of chemical data. Education and career Barbas has a Ph.D. from Complutense University of Madrid. From 2005 until 2006 she was a Marie Curie fellow at King's College London. As of 2022 she is a professor of analytical chemistry at the Universidad CEU San Pablo and is the president of the Madrid section of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry.

#1632

Terri Goss Kinzy

#50932

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Terri Goss Kinzy is an American biochemist, educator and academic administrator. Life Kinzy was born in Canton, Ohio. Kinzy was partly inspired by a high school physics teacher to pursue a career in science. She completed a B.S. in chemistry, magna cum laude, at the University of Akron in 1985. She was a chemist at BP America in Warrensville Heights, Ohio from 1985 to 1987, focusing on biofuel development. Kinzy completed a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the Case Western Reserve University. Her 1991 dissertation was titled Characterization of GTP and aminoacyl-tRNA binding to eukaryotic initiation factor 2 and elongation factor 1.

#1633

Inger Sandlie

#130933

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Inger Sandlie is a Norwegian molecular biologist. She took her dr.philos. degree in biochemistry at the University of Bergen, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University. She was hired at the University of Oslo in 1988, and is now a professor at the Section for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

#1634

Sandra Pizzarello

Sandra Pizzarello

#123940

Overall Influence

1933 - 2021 (88 years)

Sandra Pizzarello, D.Bi.Sc. was a Venetian biochemist known for her co-discovery of amino acid enantiomeric excess in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Her research interests concerned the characterization of meteoritic organic compounds in elucidating the evolution of planetary homochirality. Pizzarello was a project collaborator and co-investigator for the NASA Astrobiology Institute , the president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life , and an emerita professor at Arizona State University .

#1635

Wang Yanyi

#55233

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Wang Yanyi , is a Chinese immunologist and virologist. Since 2018, she became the director general at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the deputy director for Wuhan in the China Zhi Gong Party. Education Wang earned her Bachelor's degree at the Peking University in 2004. After graduating, she went to the University of Colorado for her master's degree. She is married to Shu Hongbing, a graduate of Emory University.

#1636

Diane Barber

#122289

Overall Influence

Diane L. Barber is an American cell biologist. She is an Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Cell and Tissue Biology at University of California, San Francisco and an elected American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow in recognition of her "distinguished contributions on cell signaling by plasma membrane ion transport proteins and on the design and function of proteins regulated by intracellular pH dynamics." In addition to teaching graduate and professional students and her administrative service, she directs a research laboratory funded by grants from the Natio...

#1637

Kathleen E. Cullen

#100523

Overall Influence

Kathleen E. Cullen is an American–Canadian biomedical engineer and neuroscientist. She is known for her work combining computational and systems neuroscience to understand how the brain encodes and processes self-motion information to ensure the maintenance of balance and stable perception. Her research also focuses on extending this knowledge to further advance the development of novel diagnostic tools, treatments, training, and rehabilitative strategies for patients.

#1638

Katharine Phillips

#121146

Overall Influence

Katharine A. Phillips is an American psychiatrist who specializes in body dysmorphic disorder. She is a professor of psychiatry at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine. She has contributed to more than 350 scientific journals and books and has been featured in interviews with numerous media outlets, such as the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Boston Globe.

#1639

Linda Brubaker

#131149

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

#1640

Juanita Merchant

Juanita Merchant

#112550

Overall Influence

Juanita L. Merchant is an American gastroenterologist and physiology researcher who has contributed to understanding of gastric response to chronic inflammation. She is currently the chief of the University of Arizona Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Merchant was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2008, and appointed an inaugural member of the NIH Council of Councils.

#1641

Alexandra Ros

#32873

Overall Influence

Alexandra Ros is a German analytical chemist who is a professor in both the School of Molecular Sciences and Center for Applied Structural Discovery at The Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University. Her research considers microfluidic platforms and their use in analysis. She was awarded the 2020 Advancing Electrokinetic Science AES Electrophoresis Society Mid-Career Achievement Award.

#1642

Lorraine Dennerstein

#123624

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Lorraine Dennerstein M.B.B.S., Ph.D., D.P.M., M.R.A.N.Z.C.P., F.R.A.N.Z.C.P., HonDMedSc is a leading Australian researcher and practicing psychiatrist specialising in women's mental and sexual health.

#1643

Andrea Gore

#59661

Overall Influence

Andrea C. Gore is a neuroendocrinology professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the Division of Toxicology and Pharmacology, where she holds the Vacek Chair of Pharmacology. She is a prominent contributor to the field of reproductive endocrinology. Her research interests span from the neurological basis of reproductive aging to endocrine disruptors in the nervous system. From January 2013 through December 2017, she was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Endocrinology. She has also been elected into the Fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#1644

Nancy Marcus

#89961

Overall Influence

1950 - 2018 (68 years)

Nancy Helen Marcus was an American biologist and oceanographer. During her graduate studies, Marcus became known as an expert on copepod ecology and evolutionary biology. She began her career as a postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she studied copepod dormancy and its implications for marine aquaculture. She continued her field research as a professor of oceanography and later as the director of the Florida State University Marine Laboratory . During this time Marcus was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Women in Science and the American Associatio...

#1645

Barbara K. Felber

#128632

Overall Influence

Barbara K. Felber is an American biologist specialized in human retrovirus pathogenesis and gene regulation. She is a senior investigator in the vaccine branch at the National Cancer Institute. Education Felber completed a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Bern. She was a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of biochemistry at the National Cancer Institute.

#1646

Karla Satchell

#69598

Overall Influence

Karla Satchell, born Karla Fullner, is an American microbiologist who is currently a professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#1647

Rebecca Kilner

#107231

Overall Influence

Rebecca M. Kilner FRES is a British evolutionary biologist, and a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Cambridge. Education and career Kilner studied a BA in Zoology at the University of Oxford in 1992, and received a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology at the University of Cambridge in 1996. She worked as a Junior Research Fellow at Magdelene College, Cambridge, and in 1998 was a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow; she was appointed Lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 2005 and a Reader in 2009.

#1648

Susan Rosser

#98051

Overall Influence

Susan Rosser FRSB FLSW is a professor of Synthetic Biology at the University of Edinburgh. Rosser’s research focuses on the development of synthetic biology approaches and tools for engineering pathways and genomes in cell systems. Her work has been applied in biologic therapeutics, developing genetic tools for engineering stem cells and bio-computation.

#1649

Rosemary Gillespie

#110904

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Rosemary Gillespie is an evolutionary biologist and professor of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, Division of Insect Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the President of the American Genetics Association in 2018 and was previously President of the International Biogeography Society 2013–2015. From 2011 to 2013 she had served at the president of the American Arachnological Society. As of 2020 she is the faculty director of the Essig Museum of Entomology and a Professor and Schlinger Chair in systematic entomology at the University of California, Berkeley. Gill...

#1650

Tanja Kortemme

#95772

Overall Influence

Tanja Kortemme is a bioengineering professor at University of California, San Francisco. She has been recognized for outstanding contributions in computational protein design, including energy functions, sampling algorithms, and molecules to rewire cellular control circuits. She was an inaugural Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator and was inducted into American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows.

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