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).

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List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#1701

Alycia Stigall

#127788
Overall Influence
Alycia L. Stigall is an American palaeontologist. As a professor at Ohio University, she was the first to analyze the biogeographic ranges of Paleozoic fossils using Geographic information systems. Early life and education Stigall was born and raised in Colerain Township, Hamilton County, Ohio to parents Jackie and Joe Stigall. Growing up, she spent time collecting brachiopods and bryozoans from a nearby creek and went camping in various National Parks across the country. Stigall attended Colerain High School where she was a National Merit Finalist and member of the National Honor Society, Marching Band, Collage, Show Choir, and German Club.
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#1702

Sonja M. Best

Sonja M. Best
#87789
Overall Influence
Sonja Marie Best is an Australian-American virologist. She is chief of the innate immunity and pathogenesis section at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Best researches interactions between pathogenic viruses and the host immune response using flavivirus as a model.
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#1703

Hanneke Schuitemaker

#121083
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Hanneke Schuitemaker is a Dutch virologist, the Global Head of Viral Vaccine Discovery and Translational Medicine at Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Vaccines & Prevention, and a Professor of Virology at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers of the University of Amsterdam . She has been involved in the development of Janssen's Ebola vaccine and is involved in the development of a universal flu vaccine, HIV vaccine, RSV vaccine and COVID-19 vaccine.
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#1704

Birgitta Henriques-Normark

#122733
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Birgitta Henriques Normark is a Swedish doctor and researcher, focusing on the field of host-bacteria interactions and pneumococcal infections. She is a professor of Clinical Microbiology at the Karolinska Institute and is the head physician at the Karolinska University Hospital. She is a member of a number of academies including the European Academy of Microbiology, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, of which she was elected president in 2022.
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#1705

Suse Broyde

#53827
Overall Influence
Suse Broyde is an American chemical biologist who is a Professor of Biology and Affiliate Professor of Chemistry at New York University. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms that process DNA damage induced by environmental and endogenous carcinogens, notably mutagenesis and repair.
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#1706

Amy Jacot Guillarmod

Amy Jacot Guillarmod
#121823
Overall Influence
1911 - 1992 (81 years)
Amy Frances May Gordon Jacot Guillarmod , was a South African botanist and limnologist, noted for her work on the flora of Basutoland and some 200 publications, including numerous papers on wetlands, bogs and sponges.
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#1707

Claude Klee

#114691
Overall Influence
1931 - 2017 (86 years)
Claude Klee was a French biochemist. Biography Claude B. Klee attended the University of Marseille until she graduated with her medical degree in 1959. She moved to the United States to work at the National Institute of Mental Health and also spent some time in Basel. In 1961 Klee began to work at the National Institutes of Health with Herbert Tabor, Louis Sokoloff and Maxine Singer. By 1966 Klee had a laboratory at the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases. In 1974 she started what was to become her iconic work at the National Cancer Institute's Biochemistry Laboratory which led to the 1991 Presidential Rank Awards.
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#1708

Catherine A. Lozupone

#85271
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Catherine Anne Lozupone is an American microbiologist who specializes in bacteria and how they impact human health. Her noted work in trying to determine what constitutes "normal" gut bacteria, led to her creation of the UniFrac algorithm, used by researchers to plot the relationships between microbial communities in the human body.
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#1709

Avrelija Cencič

#121089
Overall Influence
1964 - 2012 (48 years)
Avrelija Cencič was a Slovenian university professor, researcher in the fields of biochemistry, molecular biology and immunology, manager and educator in health and life sciences. Education and training In 2000 she made her PhD from biochemistry and molecular biology of leukocytic and trophoblastic interferon gamma participating with University of Paris XI, Orsay, France and University of Ljubljana, Medical Faculty, Slovenia.
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#1710

Rachel Green

#127925
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Rachel Green is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on ribosomes and their function in translation. Green has also been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator since 2000.
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#1711

Kathleen L. Collins

#133811
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
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#1712

Maureen Young

#94006
Overall Influence
1915 - 2013 (98 years)
Maureen Young , was a British professor of perinatal physiology at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, London. Early life Young was born on 16 October 1915 in Southwold, England. Her mother Ina Heslop was Irish and her father William Young was an English military physician during World War I. After the war, he was appointed to the pathology department at Guy's Hospital in London, and the family to relocated there. When Young was 11, her parents were reassigned, this time to Singapore, so Maureen and her brother Ian were sent to boarding schools.
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#1713

Yizhi Jane Tao

#76980
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Yizhi Jane Tao is a Chinese biochemist, structural biologist, and professor of biochemistry and cell biology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Professor Tao led a team of researchers to be the first to map the structure of the influenza A virus nucleoprotein to an atomic level, a feat which circulated widely in the popular press. She was named among the top ten most influential Chinese of 2006 by a consortium of China's leading media outlets including Phoenix Satellite Television, China News Service, Asia Newsweek, and World Journal.
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#1714

Valerie Hu

#130193
Overall Influence
Valerie Wailin Hu is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at George Washington University, where she studies autism biomarkers. Education Hu has a bachelor's degree from the University of Hawaiʻi and a PhD from Caltech ; she conducted postdoctoral research into membrane biochemistry and immunology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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#1715

Kamini Nirmala Mendis

#62105
Overall Influence
Kamini Nirmala Mendis is a Sri Lankan professor emeritus at the University of Colombo and former malaria expert at the World Health Organization . Education Mendis went to Visakha Vidyalaya school in Colombo. She went to the University of Ceylon to study medicine in 1972, and then moved to the University of London in the UK for her PhD in 1980. For her M.D. in Microbiology, to complete her medical training, Mendis returned to her alma mater in 1989, now split into the University of Colombo.
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#1716

Caroline M. Solomon

#90776
Overall Influence
Caroline M. Solomon is an American academic whose teaching focuses on bringing deaf and hard-of-hearing students into the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Having experienced first-hand the problems for deaf students in classrooms without sign language interpreters, Solomon, who teaches biology at Gallaudet University, has designed databases to help students and teachers network with organizations and interpreters familiar with educational bridges for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. She is a co-creator of a database that formalizes the lexicon of signs used for scientific and technological terms in American Sign Language.
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#1717

Susana Agustí

#108910
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Susana Agustí Requena is a Spanish biological oceanographer who has participated in over 25 oceanographic expeditions in the Arctic, Southern Ocean , Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. She played a key role in the Malaspina Circumnavigation Expedition. She is professor in Marine Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia and an adjunct Professor at the University of Tromsø .
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#1718

Jessica Gurevitch

#82320
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Jessica Gurevitch is a plant ecologist known for meta-analysis in the fields of ecology and evolution. Education and career Gurevitch has a B.S. from Cornell University and earned her Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona in 1982. She was a postdoctoral fellow for two years at the University of Chicago before moving to the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1985. For two years starting in 1992, Guervitch worked at the National Science Foundation before returning to Stony Brook where she was promoted to professor in 2000.
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#1719

Ann Hajek

#106826
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Ann E. Hajek is an American entomologist with a focus in insect-microbe interactions. She is a professor of entomology at Cornell University. Early life and education Hajek was born in San Francisco, California, in 1952. In the 1970s, she attended University of California, Davis for two years then relocated to the UC Berkeley where she studied and worked as a practicing entomologist and science writer prior to obtaining her Ph.D. in entomology in 1974. While studying at the Division of Biological Control, Hajek earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in 1980 and 1984 respectively.
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#1720

Natalie Matosin

#58658
Overall Influence
Dr. Natalie Matosin is an Australian scientist known for research into the human brain in health and disease, and particularly how stress raises risk to mental illness. Matosin's research has been published in prestigious academic journals, as well as on The Conversation. Matosin spoke at TEDx Hamburg in June 2017 and is the 2021 Al & Val Rosenstrauss Fellow. She was previously a National Health and Medical Research Council CJ Martin Early Career Research Fellow, and Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. In 2017, Matosin was listed as a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Europe in the category of Science & Health...
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#1721

Betty Pfefferbaum

#67205
Overall Influence
Betty Pfefferbaum is a psychiatrist known for her early work in mental health treatment for children after a disaster. She is the director of the Terrorism and Disaster Center in the College of Medicine at Oakland University.
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#1722

Lisa Dixon

#78619
Overall Influence
Lisa Dixon is a professor of psychiatry at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the Director of the Division of Behavioral Health Services and Policy Research within the Department of Psychiatry. Her research focuses on improving the quality of care for individuals diagnosed with serious mental illnesses. She directs the Center for Practice Innovations at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where she oversees the implementation of evidence-based practices for individuals with serious mental illnesses for the New York State Office of Mental Health. She leads OnTrackNY, a sta...
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#1723

Monique Capron

#134266
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
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#1724

Helen Blackwell

#79589
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Helen E. Blackwell is an American organic chemist and chemical biologist. She is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Education Blackwell is a native of Shaker Heights, Ohio and was educated as an undergraduate at Oberlin College, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry in 1994. She received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1999 working with Robert Grubbs.
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#1725

Joan Cribb

#70362
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Joan Winifred Cribb was an Australian botanist and mycologist. Life and career Joan Winifred Herbert was born in Brisbane, Queensland, the daughter of botanists Vera and Desmond Herbert. She graduated from the University of Queensland with a Bachelor of Science with Honours and a Master of Science. She married fellow botanist Alan Cribb in 1954, and several years later joined him at the University of Queensland as a part-time lecturer and tutor.
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#1726

Mary Wharton

#126629
Overall Influence
1912 - 1991 (79 years)
Mary Eugenia Wharton was an American botanist, author, and environmental activist. Biography Wharton was born in Jessamine County, Kentucky on October 12, 1912, the younger of two daughters of Joseph Felix and Mayme Wharton. In 1916, the family moved to Lexington. Wharton graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1935 with a bachelor's degree in botany and geology. She then received both a master's degree in 1936 and a doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1946. In 1942, she collected dewberry, a berry closely related to blackberries, from Montgomery County, Kentucky. This berry pr...
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#1727

Katey Walter Anthony

#71224
Overall Influence
Katey M. Walter Anthony is an Alaskan aquatic ecologist and biogeochemist researching carbon and nutrient cycling between terrestrial and aquatic systems, and the cryosphere and atmosphere. Education Walter Anthony graduated magna cum laude from Mount Holyoke College . She has an M.Sc. in ecology from the University of California, Davis and a Ph.D. from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks .
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#1728

Pleasantine Mill

Pleasantine Mill
#106308
Overall Influence
Pleasantine Mill is a cell biologist and group leader at the MRC Human Genetics Unit at the University of Edinburgh. She won the 2018 British Society for Cell Biology Women in Cell Biology Early Career Medal.
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#1729

Mary Kearney

#132106
Overall Influence
Mary F. Kearney is an American biologist. She is a senior scientist and head of the translational research section in the HIV dynamics and replication program at the National Cancer Institute. Education Kearney completed a B.A. and M.S. in biomedical science at Hood College. Her master's thesis was titled Determining the resistance profile of conocurvone, an early-stage inhibitor of HIV-1 replication. Her advisor was Luke Pallansch. Kearney received a Ph.D. in biology from Catholic University of America in 2007 under the direction of John Coffin, Sarah Palmer, and . Her thesis was titled HIV-1 evolution in recently infect patients.
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#1730

Nokwanda Makunga

#43220
Overall Influence
Nokwanda Pearl Makunga is a Professor of Biotechnology at Stellenbosch University. Early life and education Makunga grew up in Alice in the Eastern Cape, and attended a private boarding school in Grahamstown. Her father, Oswald, was a botanist who specialised in the Iridaceae. He grew up in rural poverty and won a scholarship to study at University of Fort Hare. She attended university in Pietermaritzburg. She completed her PhD at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2004, working on the molecular biology of plants.
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#1731

Triin Vahisalu

#118468
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Triin Vahisalu is an Estonian botanist. She studies the effects of stress on plants and discovered a gene that regulates stomata in harsh environments. Education Vahisalu attended the University of Tartu for her undergraduate degree in biology between 1997 and 2004 and stayed on until 2005 for her master's.
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#1732

Patrizia Mecocci

#134547
Overall Influence
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#1733

Caroline Palmer

#77767
Overall Influence
Caroline Palmer is the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Performance and Professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is also an Associate Faculty Member in the Schulich School of Music at McGill. Her research in cognitive science addresses the behavioural and neural foundations that make it possible for people to produce auditory sequences such as playing a musical instrument or speaking. Palmer has developed and empirically tested computational models of how people perceive and produce auditory sequences, and how they coordinate th...
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#1734

Vidya Arankalle

#134591
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Vidya Avinash Arankalle is an Indian virologist whose work is multidisciplinary, incorporating aspects of cell culture and microbiology. Life She is a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, and the Indian Academy of Sciences.
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#1735

Tiiu Kull

#126272
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Tiiu Kull is an Estonian botanist. She specialises in the study of population dynamics in plant species and has published an extensive number of papers on the subject. In 1997 she conducted a study, "Population studies of native orchids in Estonia".
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#1736

Margarita Arboix

Margarita Arboix
#65608
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Margarita Arboix Arzo is the former Rector of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She obtained a Bachelor's degree and later a doctorate in biology by the same university. In 1976 she was employed in the pharmacology department of the Faculty of Medicine, and transferred to a teaching position in the Faculty of Veterinary Sciences nine years later.
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#1737

Sarah Robertson

#82013
Overall Influence
Sarah Anne Robertson is a fellow of both the Australian Academy of Science and Australian Academy for Health and Medical Sciences, and Professor of Reproductive Immunology at University of Adelaide, Australia, and Director of the Robinson Research Institute. She was an NHMRC fellow for more than 15 years.
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#1738

Megan Carey

#59632
Overall Influence
Megan Carey is a neuroscientist and Group Leader of the Neural Circuits and Behavior Laboratory at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown in Lisbon, Portugal. She is known for her work on how the cerebellum controls coordinated movement.
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#1739

Nerida Wilson

Nerida Wilson
#126198
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Nerida Gaye Wilson is an invertebrate marine molecular biologist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation who has interests in diversity, systematics, phylogeny, phylogeography and behavior. Wilson has been instrumental in demonstrating the level of marine cryptic species complexes in Antarctic waters, testing the circumpolar distribution paradigm with molecular data, and using interdisciplinary approaches to show how Antarctic diversity may have been generated. Her work with NOAA on Antarctic Marine Living Resources has been used to regulate exploratory benthic fish...
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#1740

Christine Jacobs-Wagner

#132430
Overall Influence
Christine Jacobs-Wagner is a microbial molecular biologist. She is the William H. Fleming, MD Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University and Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis, HHMI investigator, and director of the Microbial Sciences Institute at Yale Medical School. Jacobs-Wagner's research has shown that bacterial cells have a great deal of substructure, including analogs of microfilaments, and that proteins are directed by regulatory processes to locate to specific places within the bacterial cell. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in...
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#1741

Barbara Lawrence

#99562
Overall Influence
1909 - 1997 (88 years)
Barbara Lawrence , sometimes known as Barbara Lawrence Schevill, was an American paleozoologist and mammalogist known for her studies of canids, porpoises and howler monkeys and her work as the mammal curator at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology .
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#1742

Anne M. Bowcock

#134717
Overall Influence
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#1743

Jane Hill

#130582
Overall Influence
Jane Katharine Hill Hon.FRES is British ecologist, and professor of ecology at the University of York and is the current President of the Royal Entomological Society; research includes the effects of climate change and habitat degradation on insects.
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#1744

Stacey Missmer

#91289
Overall Influence
Stacey Ann Missmer is an American reproductive biologist who is a professor at Michigan State University. She was the first faculty member to be appointed under the Michigan State University Global Health Initiative. Her research considers physical and environmental risk factors for endometriosis and infertility.
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#1745

Ashley Shade

#71017
Overall Influence
Ashley L. Shade is the Director of Research at the Institute of Ecology and the Environment within Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Shade is an associate professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences. She is best known for her work in microbial ecology and plant-microbe interactions.
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#1746

Eileen Ingham

#130386
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Eileen Ingham is a multidisciplinary scientist specialising in biochemistry, microbiology, clinical immunology and pathogenesis. She is most recognized for her work and contribution to biocompatibility in medical implants. She is currently a professor at the University of Leeds as of 2016 when she was elected as Professor for Medical Immunology.
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#1747

Susan Lozier

Susan Lozier
#76031
Overall Influence
Susan Lozier is a physical oceanographer and the dean of the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Sciences. Previously, she was the Ronie-Richelle Garcia-Johnson Professor of Earth and Ocean Sciences in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Her research focuses on large-scale ocean circulation, the ocean's role in climate variability, and the transfer of heat and fresh water from one part of the ocean to another.
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#1748

Joy K. Ward

#119774
Overall Influence
Joy K. Ward is a leading evolutionary biologist studying the impact of the environment on plants and ecosystems. She began a new role as the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Case Western Reserve University on July 1, 2020 - leaving behind her professorship at the University of Kansas. Her research on plant life has gained her notoriety in many scientific research fields. Aside from her work in the lab, she is also a strong advocate for advancing underrepresented communities' scientific learning and careers. As part of her deanship at the University of Kansas, Ward was an important fac...
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#1749

Ella Campbell

#122612
Overall Influence
1910 - 2003 (93 years)
Dame Ella Orr Campbell was a New Zealand botanist. An expert on bryophytes, she published 130 scientific papers on liverworts, hornworts, orchids, and wetlands. She became the first woman faculty member of the Massey Agricultural College in 1945, and in 2003 the herbarium at Massey was renamed the Dame Ella Campbell Herbarium in her honour. Following her retirement from teaching in 1976, she continued to research and publish for another two decades, finally retiring in 2000 at the age of 90.
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#1750

Cigall Kadoch

#115217
Overall Influence
Cigall Kadoch is an American biochemist and cancer biologist who is Associate Professor of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her research is focused in chromatin regulation and how changes in cellular structure can lead to human diseases, such as Cancer, Neurodevelopmental disorders, and others. She is internationally recognized for her work on the mammalian SWI/SNF complex, a large molecular machine known as a Chromatin remodeling complex. She was named as one of the world's leading sc...
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