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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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#1651

Hana Librová

#94707

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Hana Librová is a Czech biologist, sociologist and environmentalist. She founded the Department of Environmental Studies at Masaryk University. She has carried out research on environmental lifestyle and environmental values.

#1652

Catherine Lovelock

Catherine Lovelock

#130070

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Catherine Ellen Lovelock is an Australian marine ecologist, whose research focuses on coastal ecosystems. She is a professor in the School of Biological Science at the University of Queensland and 2020 Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellow.

#1653

Angela R. Laird

#131726

Overall Influence

#1654

Barbara Nowak

#131729

Overall Influence

Barbara F. Nowak is a Polish-born Australian ichthyologist who specialises in sustainable aquaculture and aquatic animal health. As of 2021 she is Professor and Associate Dean Research Training at the University of Tasmania.

#1655

Katherine Willis, Baroness Willis of Summertown

Katherine Willis, Baroness Willis of Summertown

#124144

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Katherine Jane Willis, Baroness Willis of Summertown, is a British biologist, academic and life peer, who studies the relationship between long-term ecosystem dynamics and environmental change. She is Professor of Biodiversity in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, and an adjunct professor in biology at the University of Bergen. In 2018 she was elected Principal of St Edmund Hall, and took up the position from 1 October. She held the Tasso Leventis Chair of Biodiversity at Oxford and was founding Director, now Associate Director, of the Biodiversity Institute Oxford. Willis was Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 2013 to 2018.

#1656

Pamela Hallock

#128928

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Pamela Hallock Muller is a scientist, oceanographer and professor at the University of South Florida in the College of Marine Science. Overview Hallock Muller's research has focused on reef-associated Foraminifera and algal symbiosis, extending into coral-reef ecology, paleobiology and carbonate sedimentology.

#1657

Lore Steubing

#131852

Overall Influence

1922 - 2012 (90 years)

Lore Steubing was a German botanist, generally an ecologist, born on February 1, 1922. She was former head of Chair of Plant Ecology in the Department of Biology at University of Giessen in Giessen. Steubing died on January 1, 2012, because of a travel accident, in the Augsburg Clinic.

#1658

Andrea Marzi

#91836

Overall Influence

Andrea Marzi is a German-American virologist. She is chief of the immunobiology and molecular virology unit at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Marzi investigates the pathogenesis of filoviruses and vaccine development. She received the in recognition of her research.

#1659

Sonja A. Rasmussen

#131939

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

#1660

Karen Heywood

#111579

Overall Influence

Karen Joy Heywood is a British Antarctic oceanographer and Professor of Physical Oceanography at the University of East Anglia . She is best known for her work developing autonomous measurements of the Southern Ocean.

#1661

Paola Leone

#68502

Overall Influence

Paola Leone is an Italian researcher of Canavan disease, a leukodystrophy. Leone was born and raised in Cagliari, Italy. She received her undergraduate and graduate training in Italy, followed by post-doctoral studies in Montreal and Yale University in New Haven, CT. She holds a doctorate degree in Neuroscience from the University of Padua. Her work on Canavan disease started at Yale, where she collaborated with other early pioneers in gene therapy. She left Yale in 1998 to join the Cell & Gene Therapy Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. She directs The Cell & Gene Therapy ...

#1662

Lilian Hawker

#123459

Overall Influence

1908 - 1991 (83 years)

Lilian Edith Hawker was a British mycologist, known for her work on fungal physiology, particularly spore production. She was an expert on British truffles, and also published in the fields of plant physiology and plant pathology. She was also known for her contributions to education in mycology. Most of her career was spent at the botany department of the Imperial College of Science and Technology and the University of Bristol , where she held the chair in mycology and was dean of the science faculty . She served as president of the British Mycological Society, and was elected an honorary member of that society and of the Mycological Society of America.

#1663

Carolyn M. Mazure

#105522

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Carolyn M. Mazure is an American psychologist and the Norma Weinberg Spungen and Joan Lebson Bildner Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. She created and directs Women’s Health Research at Yale — Yale’s interdisciplinary research center on health and gender.

#1664

Tundi Spring Agardy

#100696

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Tundi Agardy is a marine conservationist and the founder of Sound Seas – a Washington DC-based group specializing in working at the nexus of marine science and policy in order to safeguard ocean life.

#1665

Ruth Empson

#98921

Overall Influence

Ruth Mary Empson is a New Zealand physiology academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Otago. Academic career After a 1993 PhD titled 'Primary and secondary epileptic foci from hippocampus and neocortex in the tetanus toxin model of chronic epilepsy' at the University of London, Empson moved to the University of Otago, rising to full professor.

#1666

Elisa Granato

#130459

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (36 years)

Elisa Teresa Granato is a molecular microbiologist in the Departments of Zoology and Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, where she researches bacterial interactions and how they evolved, including the significance of features of bacteria that contribute to disease, also known as virulence factors.

#1667

Patricia Glibert

#131964

Overall Influence

Patricia Marguerite Glibert is marine scientist known for her research on nutrient use by phytoplankton and harmful algal blooms in Chesapeake Bay. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#1668

Susana Martinez-Conde

Susana Martinez-Conde

#78727

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Susana Martinez-Conde is a Spanish-American neuroscientist and science writer. She is a professor of ophthalmology, neurology, physiology, and pharmacology at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, where she directs the Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience. She directed laboratories previously at the Barrow Neurological Institute and University College London. Her research bridges perceptual, cognitive, and oculomotor neuroscience. She is best known for her studies on illusions, eye movements and perception, neurological disorders, and attentional misdirection in stage magic.

#1669

Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh

Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh

#103844

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh is a Professor of Plant Science at the University of Washington. She has served as the President of the society for Plant Signaling and Behavior. Early life and education Van Volkenburgh was born to Robert Heber and Jean Brown in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Van Volkenburgh became interested in biology during high school. She studied botany at Duke University, and earned her Bachelor's degree in 1973. She was most interested in plant physiology and biochemical function. She nearly majored in economics because her mother recommended education that might lead to a paying job like being a lawyer or economist, but found that she learned better the life sciences.

#1670

Graziella Pellegrini

Graziella Pellegrini

#94907

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Graziella Pellegrini is an Italian Professor of Cell Biology and the Cell Therapy Program Coordinator at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. She has developed and championed cell therapy protocols in hospitals across Italy.

#1671

Allison J. Doupe

Allison J. Doupe

#119075

Overall Influence

1954 - 2014 (60 years)

Allison Jane Doupe was a Canadian psychiatrist, biologist, and neuroscientist. She is best known for her pioneering work in avian neurobiology that linked birdsong to human language, showing that birds and humans learn to communicate in similar ways. In 2014, Doupe was awarded the Pradel Research Award by the National Academy of Sciences for her work on neural circuits and information processing in songbirds.

#1672

Mufti Nurunnessa Khatun

#103603

Overall Influence

1939 - 1997 (58 years)

Mufti Nurunnessa Khatun Sylheti: ꠝꠥꠚꠔꠤ ꠘꠥꠞꠥꠘ꠆ꠘꠦꠍꠣ ꠈꠣꠔꠥꠘ was a Bangladeshi writer, academic, and botanist. Early life Khatun was born on 31 December 1939 in Sylhet, Assam, British Raj. She lived in Shillong during her childhood. In 1947 she moved to Sylhet, the same year Sylhet was joined to East Bengal to become part of the future state of Pakistan through the Sylhet referendum. She graduated from Government Girls' School in Sylhet in 1953. She graduated from Murari Chand College after completing her ISc and BSc. She did her MSc in Mycology and Phytopathology from the University of Dhaka.

#1673

Julijana Gjorgjieva

#104872

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (41 years)

Julijana Gjorgjieva is a Macedonian-German professor of computational neuroscience at the Technical University of Munich and a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. Her laboratory studies neural circuit formation.

#1674

Mary L. Marazita

#131488

Overall Influence

Mary Louise Marazita is an American geneticist. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine. Early life and education Marazita was born in Cheboygan, Michigan to parents Philip and Eleanor Marazita. She graduated with her bachelor's degree in animal husbandry from Michigan State University and her PhD in genetics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She wrote her thesis under the guidance of Robert C. Elston. Following her PhD, Marazita completed her post-doctoral training in craniofacial biology at the University of Southern Cali...

#1675

Patricia Miang Lon Ng

#117257

Overall Influence

Patricia Mian Lon Ng is a Singaporean scientist. She is a researcher at the Singapore Immunology Network. Biography Ng holds a Ph.D. degree in cell and molecular biology. She is a research fellow at the Singapore Immunology Network, part of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore.

#1676

Sarrah Ben M'barek

#117656

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Sarrah Ben M'barek-Ben Romdhane is a Tunisian-Dutch crop researcher. She works on developing fungus-resistant wheat strains to reduce the toll of Mycosphaerella graminicola on yields. Early life and education Ben M'barek was born in Tunisia in 1979. However, she would regularly visit her mother's family in the Netherlands near tree nurseries in Boskoop. Seeing these cultivation centres and wheat plantations in Beja, Tunisia fuelled her interest in plant biology.

#1677

Glenda MacQueen

#99705

Overall Influence

1965 - 2020 (55 years)

Glenda Marlene MacQueen was a Canadian medical researcher and medical college professor and administrator. She was vice-dean of the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary from 2012 to 2019.

#1678

Jennifer L. Martin

Jennifer L. Martin

#95828

Overall Influence

Professor Jennifer Louise "Jenny" Martin is an Australian scientist, academic, and was recently the Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Wollongong, in New South Wales. She is a former Director of the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery at Griffith University. and a former Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland. Her research expertise lies in the areas of structural biology, protein crystallography, protein interactions and their applications in drug design and discovery.

#1679

Ruth Dayhoff

#85999

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Ruth Dayhoff is an American physician and medical bioinformatician. Early life Dayhoff is the daughter of Margaret Oakley Dayhoff, an early bioinformatician, and Edward S Dayhoff, a distinguished Physicist in the area of Electro-optics. From a young age, Dayhoff was encouraged by her mother to pursue scientific interests. In Dayhoff's words:

#1680

Vicky J. Meretsky

#76150

Overall Influence

Vicky J. Meretsky is an American professor and Director of Environmental Masters Programs at Indiana University Bloomington. Education Meretsky received a Bachelor of Sciences at Cornell University in 1980. In 1988, she completed her first Master's degree in Wildlife Ecology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California and pursued a second Master's degree in Statistics from the University of Arizona in 1993. She completed her Doctorate in 1995 at the University of Arizona, where she studied the foraging ecology of Egyptian vultures in the Negev Desert.

#1681

Kari Dunfield

#131881

Overall Influence

Kari Edith Dunfield is a Canadian microbiologist. She is a Canada Research Chair in Environmental Microbiology of Agro-ecosystems and Professor in Applied Soil Ecology in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guelph. , she is the co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Microbiology.

#1682

Velia Fowler

#124280

Overall Influence

Velia M. Fowler is an American cell biologist and biochemist specializing in the cytoskeleton. She is a professor and chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Delaware. Early life and education Fowler obtained her bachelor of arts from Oberlin College in 1974 and her PhD from Harvard University in 1980. While working on her PhD, she was named a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellow.

#1683

Gertrud Dahlgren

#104740

Overall Influence

1931 - 2009 (78 years)

Life Gertrud Dahlgren was a Swedish botanist. She was born at Klippan in Scania, and after graduating from university at Helsingborg went to the University of Lund for graduate studies. There she obtained her M.Sc. in chemistry and biology. She was married to fellow botanist Rolf Dahlgren , who was killed in a car accident. Gertrud Dahlgren had three children, Elisabet, Karin and Anders. She died in February 2009 at the age of 78.

#1684

Janet Sinsheimer

#92653

Overall Influence

Janet Suzanne Sinsheimer was an American expert in statistical genetics who worked as a professor of human genetics, biomathematics and biostatistics in the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. Topics in her research included genome-wide association studies, epigenetics, and Bayesian methods for phylogenetics.

#1685

Elizabeth Harper

#122449

Overall Influence

Elizabeth M. Harper is an evolutionary biologist known for her work on molluscs. She is an honorary fellow of the British Antarctic Survey and was accorded the title of Honorary Professor by the University of Cambridge in 2019.

#1686

Anne Wyllie

#44487

Overall Influence

Anne Louise Wyllie is a New Zealand microbiologist who was the lead author of a 2020 research article which led to the development of the SalivaDirect PCR method of testing saliva for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. She has also worked on community studies to better understand pneumococcal disease. She is a research scientist in epidemiology with the Public Health Modeling Unit at Yale University.

#1687

Bernadette Modell

#91154

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Professor Bernadette Modell is a British geneticist, specialising in the study of thalassaemia. Modell attended a convent school, and then graduated in zoology, with genetics and embryology from the University of Oxford, in 1955. She then undertook a doctorate in developmental biology at Cambridge University, qualifying in 1959. She next studied medicine at Cambridge and at University College Hospital, qualifying in 1964.

#1688

Giomar Helena Borrero-Pérez

#117374

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Giomar Helena Borrero-Pérez is a Colombian marine biologist. In 2012 she became the sixth Colombian scientist to be awarded a L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award. Her work considers the conservation of sea cucumbers.

#1689

Nadia Waloff

#126491

Overall Influence

1909 - 2001 (92 years)

Nadejda "Nadia" Waloff FRES was a Russian-born English entomologist. She worked on the biology of locusts, flight and dispersal of the Hemiptera, and taught at Imperial College, Silwood Park campus.

#1690

Keewaydinoquay Peschel

#43589

Overall Influence

1919 - 1999 (80 years)

Keewaydinoquay Pakawakuk Peschel was a scholar, ethnobotanist, herbalist, medicine woman, teacher and author. She was an Anishinaabeg Elder of the Crane Clan. She was born in Michigan around 1919 and spent time on Garden Island, a traditional Anishinaabeg homeland.

#1691

Nyawira Muthiga

#127478

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Nyawira A. Muthiga is an African conservation zoologist who is Director of the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association Marine Programme in Kenya. She is a conservation scientist for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

#1692

Daria Nina Love

#94409

Overall Influence

1946 - 2001 (55 years)

Daria Nina Love was an Australian veterinary microbiologist and educator. She was the first woman to be awarded the University of Sydney Medal for Veterinary Science and the first woman in the Faculty of Veterinary Science to be awarded a PhD , for her thesis entitled ‘Studies on virus host-cell relationships of a feline calicivirus’. She was also the first woman to become an associate professor in the Faculty of Veterinary Science, although her bids to become a full professor were unsuccessful. In 1988, she became the first woman in Australia to be awarded a Doctor of Veterinary Science on ...

#1693

Dian Donnai

#78159

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Professor Dian Donnai is a British medical geneticist. Biography Donnai studied at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, then trained in paediatrics at St Mary's Hospital, Northwick Park Hospital and in Sheffield.

#1694

Ellen Wright Clayton

#91900

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Ellen Wright Clayton is an American Rosalind E. Franklin Professor of genetics and chairwoman of the Institute of Medicine Board at the Population Health and Public Health Practice who became a 2013 recipient of the David Rall Medal.

#1695

Amy Gladfelter

#120649

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Amy S. Gladfelter is an American quantitative cell biologist who is interested in understanding fundamental mechanisms of cell organization. She is a Professor of Biology and the Associate Chair for Diversity Initiatives at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she investigates cell cycle control and the septin cytoskeleton. She is also affiliated with the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and is a fellow of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.

#1696

Andia Chaves Fonnegra

#104871

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Andia Chaves Fonnegra is a Colombian marine biologist known for her research on the marine sponge Cliona delitrix. Education and career Chaves earned her bachelor's degree and her master's degree in marine biology from the National University of Colombia. In 2007 she taught at Colombia's Universidad Pedagogic Nacional before moving to the University of Alberta where she worked from 2007 to 2008. In 2009 she moved to Florida and became a graduate student at Nova Southeastern University, where she graduated in 2014 with a PhD in oceanography and marine biology. Fonnegra's dissertation was "Inc...

#1697

Kathryn H. Schmitz

#126595

Overall Influence

Mary Kathryn "Katie" Haltiwanger Schmitz is an American exercise physiologist. She is the Associate Director of Population Sciences at Penn State University College of Medicine and a Full Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

#1698

Kari Nadeau

#85733

Overall Influence

Kari C. Nadeau is the Chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health and John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies. She practices Allergy, Asthma, Immunology in children and adults. She has published over 400+ papers, many in the field of climate change and health. Dr. Nadeau, with a team of individuals and patients and families, has been able to help major progress and impact in the clinical fields of immunology, infection, asthma and allergy. Dr. Nadeau is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the U.S. EPA Children’s Health Prote...

#1699

Sonia Altizer

#113884

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Sonia M. Altizer is the Georgia Athletic Association Professor of Ecology in the University of Georgia, Odum School of Ecology. Early life Altizer was born as the daughter of Jim and Chris Altizer of Watkinsville, Georgia. She grew up in York, Pennsylvania. Her passion for biology and the natural world began when she received a gift of a microscope and a grow-your-own-butterflies kit on her twelfth birthday.

#1700

Pauline Rudd

#104028

Overall Influence

Pauline Rudd is a British biochemist and Professor at the Microbiome Institute, University College Cork. She is a founder of Wessex Biochemicals, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and was awarded the James Gregory Medal in 2010.

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