The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential female people in Biology,
#1951
Ellen Lumpkin
#93448
Overall Influence
Ellen Lumpkin is an American neuroscientist and professor of cell and developmental biology and neurobiology at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also co-director of the MBL Advanced Training Course in Neurobiology, and adjunct associate professor of physiology and cellular biophysics and co-director of the Thompson Family Foundation Initiative in CIPN and Sensory Neuroscience at Columbia University. Lumpkin's group studies genes, cells and signals that mediate the sensation of touch. Lumpkin is most interested in the somatosensory system and how it gives feedback to the brain on sensations such as pain or touch.
Go to Profile#1952
Grethe Rytter Hasle
#72255
Overall Influence
1920 - 2013 (93 years)
Grethe Berit Rytter Hasle was a Norwegian planktologist. Among the first female professors of natural science at the University of Oslo, she specialized in the study of phytoplankton. Personal life Hasle was born in Borre as the daughter of shipmaster Johan Kristian Rytter and his wife Nicoline Olava Nielsen . She married Hans Martin Hasle and took his name; he died in 1971. She resided at Ekeberg in Norway and died in November 2013.
Go to Profile#1953
Rose Leke
#100423
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Rose Gana Fomban Leke is a Cameroonian malariologist and Emeritus Professor of Immunology and Parasitology at the University of Yaounde I. Early life and education When Leke was growing up she suffered from malaria multiple times, it was a normal part of life. She was first interested in medicine due to treatment she received for lung abscess in Limbe when she was six years old. Her mother never went to school, however her father was a school teacher, and both encouraged her to pursue educational opportunities. She went to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, Indiana, US in 1966 for her undergradu...
Go to Profile#1954
Neva Haites
#107762
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Neva Haites OBE FRSE FMedSci is a scientist and physician who investigates molecular genetics and diseases in humans and specialises in cancer genetics; she has more than 90 publications in genetics concerning inherited predisposition to cancer, retinitis pigmentosa, hereditary motor neuropathy and sensory neuropathy.
Go to Profile#1955
Elizabeth A. McMahan
#125520
Overall Influence
1924 - 2009 (85 years)
Elizabeth Anne McMahan , known as Betty, was a Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 26 years. She had a distinguished and varied career as an entomologist, psychologist, cartoonist, writer of children's books, and world traveler. She worked in the parapsychology lab of J. B. Rhine at Duke for several years, but left for graduate work in entomology at the University of Hawaiʻi and subsequent research on the feeding, foraging, and social behavior of termites and some of their associate and predator species. Her field work in entomology took her to Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Australia, and India.
Go to Profile#1956
Samantha Joye
#86106
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Samantha "Mandy" Joye is an American oceanographer who is well known for her work studying the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. She is a professor at the University of Georgia in the Department of Marine Sciences. Joye has made fundamental contributions in ocean biogeochemistry and microbial ecology, and is also regularly called upon by scientific and policy agencies as well as the media for expert commentary on ocean ecology. She was the expedition scientist and a lead science advisor for The Deep episode, part of the BBC's Blue Planet II, and is featured in production videos including Brine Pools: Exploring an Alien World for Blue Planet II and Future of the Oceans.
Go to Profile#1957
Lisa Monteggia
#130179
Overall Influence
Lisa M. Monteggia is an American neuroscientist who is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology, Psychiatry & Psychology as well as the Barlow Family Director of the Vanderbilt Brain Institute at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Monteggia probes the molecular mechanisms underlying psychiatric disorders and has made critical discoveries about the role of the neurotrophins in antidepressant efficacy, the antidepressant mechanisms of Ketamine, as well as the epigenetic regulation of synaptic transmission by MeCP2.
Go to Profile#1958
Jamie S. Foster
#75003
Overall Influence
Jamie S. Foster is an American astrobiologist, microbiologist, and academic. She is a professor at the Department of Microbiology and Cell Science, and Genetics and Genomes Graduate Program at the University of Florida.
Go to Profile#1959
Karen H. Black
#94083
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Karen H. Black, born about 1970, is a palaeontologist at the University of New South Wales. Black is the leading author on research describing new families, genera and species of fossil mammals. She is interested in understanding faunal change and community structure in order to gain new understandings of past, current and future changes in biodiversity which are driven by climate.
Go to Profile#1960
Nathalie Jetté
#145114
Overall Influence
#1961
Margaret Adebisi Sowunmi
#105110
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Margaret Adebisi Sowunmi is a Nigerian botanist and environmental archaeologist. She was Professor of Palynology and Environmental Archaeology at the University of Ibadan. She pioneered the study of environmental archaeology and palaeoethnobotany in Nigeria and is the founder and president of the Palynological Association of Nigeria.
Go to Profile#1962
Jacqueline Cramer
#93275
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Jacqueline Marian Cramer is a retired Dutch politician of the Labour Party and biologist. Cramer was Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment in the Fourth Balkenende cabinet for the PvdA. Previously she was a professor of sustainable entrepreneurship at Utrecht University and professor of environmental management at Erasmus University. She is member of the board of directors at Royal Dutch Shell and a member of the Social-Economic Council. Eisenhower Fellowships selected Jacqueline Cramer in 1992 to represent The Netherlands.
Go to Profile#1963
Karen Mossman
#129994
Overall Influence
Karen Louise Mossman is a Canadian virologist who is a professor of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at McMaster University. Mossman looks to understand how viruses get around the defence mechanisms of cells. She was part of a team of Canadian researchers who first isolated SARS-CoV-2.
Go to Profile#1964
Yvonne Cossart
#104909
Overall Influence
1934 - 2014 (80 years)
Yvonne Edna Cossart was an Australian virologist, who discovered the parvovirus B19 in 1975. Cossart graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Science in 1957 and MB BS in 1959. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honours for "service to medicine as a specialist in infectious diseases, especially in the areas of virological research, epidemiology and disease prevention, and to education".
Go to Profile#1965
Hiba Mohamed
#133266
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Hiba Salah-Eldin Mohamed is a Sudanese molecular biologist who works at the University of Khartoum. She won the 2007 Royal Society Pfizer Award. Early life and education Hiba studied zoology at the University of Khartoum, earning a Bachelors in 1993 and a Masters in 1998. She moved to the University of Cambridge Institute for Medical Research for her PhD in 2002. Her doctoral research, "The role of Host Genetics in Susceptibility to Kala-azar in The Sudan", was under the supervision of Jenefer Blackwell. She remained at the CIMR as a postdoctoral fellow.
Go to Profile#1966
Yi-Fang Tsay
#64322
Overall Influence
Yi-Fang Tsay is a Taiwanese botanist. She is a distinguished research fellow at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica. Education For high school she attended Taipei First Girls' High School. She received her bachelor's and master's degree from Department of Botany, National Taiwan University. In 1990 she completed her PhD in biological sciences at Carnegie Mellon University.
Go to Profile#1967
Janet L. Smith
#115189
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Janet Louise Smith is the Margaret J. Hunter Collegiate Professor in the Life Sciences Institute, director of the Center for Structural Biology at the University of Michigan, professor of biological chemistry and biophysics at the University of Michigan, and research professor in the Life Sciences Institute. Additionally, she is the scientific director of The General Medical Sciences and Cancer Institutes’ structural biology facility at the Advanced Photon Source .
Go to Profile#1968
Lucrecia Covelo
#103700
Overall Influence
1920 - 2000 (80 years)
Lucrecia Covelo de Zolessi was a Uruguayan entomologist, curator and film-maker, who taught at the Faculty of Humanities and Sciences at the University of the Republic, where she was Chair of the Entomology department.
Go to Profile#1969
Sangita Mukhopadhyay
#117057
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Sangita Mukhopadhyay is an Indian molecular cell biologist, immunologist and the head of the molecular biology group at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics. Known for her studies on immunosuppression and infection biology, Mukhopadhyay is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies namely the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, India. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science a...
Go to Profile#1970
Janine Deakin
#38987
Overall Influence
Janine Deakin is a professor at the University of Canberra and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology. She is a geneticist with expertise in the areas of comparative genomics, epigenetics, genetic immunology and genome structure and regulation. A majority of her work has focused on the Australian marsupials and monotremes where her cytogenetic and molecular research on marsupial chromosomes and development of strategies to map genomes has provided important insight into the evolution of mammalian genomes.
Go to Profile#1971
Christiana Ruhrberg
#137537
Overall Influence
Christiana Ruhrberg is a German-British cell biologist who is Professor of Neuronal and Vascular Biology, University College London. She looks to understand how cells interact during the development and disease of mammals.
Go to Profile#1972
Nicola Allen
#141016
Overall Influence
Nicola J. Allen is a British neuroscientist. Allen studies the role of astrocytes in brain development, homeostasis, and aging. Her work uncovered the critical roles these cells play in brain plasticity and disease. Allen is currently an associate professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Hearst Foundation Development Chair.
Go to Profile#1973
Ingeborg Markgraf-Dannenberg
#145736
Overall Influence
1911 - 1996 (85 years)
Ingeborg Markgraf-Dannenberg was a Swiss naturalist, botanist, taxonomist, and teacher noted for her work at the Institute for Systematic Botany at the University of Zurich, in particular her work classifying the genus Festuca. She described over 120 species, and the grass Festuca markgrafiae was named in her honor.
Go to Profile#1974
Liselotte Sundström
#138228
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Liselotte Sundström is a Finnish zoologist. She is professor emerita of evolutionary biology at the University of Helsinki. Early career Sundström gained her doctoral thesis and docentship in 1994. She carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Lausanne during 1994-1995, which was funded by a grant for research from the Academy of Finland as well as employment at the university. She went on to work at the University of Aarhus in the years 1995-1996. In 1996 she returned to the University of Helsinki where she became a lecturer at the Department of Ecology and Systematics. From 199...
Go to Profile#1975
Staci Bilbo
#90377
Overall Influence
Staci Bilbo is an American neuroimmunologist and The Haley Family Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Bilbo also holds a position as a research affiliate at Massachusetts General Hospital overseeing research within the Lurie Center for Autism. As the principal investigator of the Bilbo Lab, Bilbo investigates how environmental challenges during the perinatal period impact the immune system and further influence brain development, cognition, and affective behaviors later in life..
Go to Profile#1976
Drew Harvell
#141487
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Catherine Drew Harvell is a marine ecologist that researches ocean biodiversity and ocean health, specializing in diseases in marine ecosystems. Early life and education Harvell was born December 4, 1954, in the United States. Harvell completed her bachelor's degree in zoology with honors from the University of Alberta in 1978. She remained at University of Alberta to complete a master's degree in zoology, supervised by Fu-Shiang Chia. She completed her thesis and graduated in 1981. She attended the University of Washington to complete a Ph.D. in zoology and graduated in 1985.
Go to Profile#1977
Marla Spivak
#60360
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Marla Spivak is an American entomologist, and Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota specializing in apiculture and social insects. Career and research Spivak graduated with a B.A. from Humboldt State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. She is particularly well known for her work breeding lines of honey bees that detect and quickly remove diseased larvae and pupae, which is called hygienic behavior. She was instrumental in setting up the first bee Tech-Transfer Team in the United States, which continues to help honey bee queen breeders select for disease resistance traits.
Go to Profile#1978
Elizabeth Vierling
#146186
Overall Influence
#1979
Kelly Weinersmith
#72601
Overall Influence
Kelly Weinersmith is an American biologist, writer, and podcaster. She is a member of the faculty at Rice University in the Department of BioSciences, and an alumni collaborator with the Parasite Ecology Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is co-author, with her husband Zach Weinersmith, of popular science books Soonish and A City on Mars .
Go to Profile#1980
Angela H. Arthington
#146262
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
#1981
Silvia Novello
#146283
Overall Influence
#1982
Irene Tarimo
#51352
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Irene Aurelia Tarimo is a Tanzanian environmental scientist and educator. She currently serves as Head of Department of environmental studies at the Open University of Tanzania , where she is also a lecturer and a researcher. She previously served as OUT Director in the Lindi Region since 2007 to 2015.
Go to Profile#1983
Konstanze Krüger
#76802
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Konstanze Krüger-Farrouj is a German zoologist and behaviour researcher. She is Professor of Horse Management at Nürtingen-Geislingen University of Applied Science, and her special field of research is the social system of horses.
Go to Profile#1984
Kate Watkins
#91251
Overall Influence
Kathryn Emma Watkins is an experimental psychologist in the Wellcome Trust centre for integrative neuroimaging at the University of Oxford and a tutorial fellow at St Anne's College, Oxford. Her research investigates the brain processes that underlie speech, language and development.
Go to Profile#1985
Melanie Bahlo
#129144
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Melanie Bahlo is an Australian statistical geneticist and bioinformatician. Biography Bahlo’s interest with science and biology developed at a very young age. Growing up in Germany, she used to record the birds that came and visited her bird feeder during winter. Bahlo attended secondary school at Albury High School in Albury, Australia. She received her PhD in population genetics from Monash University in 1998. Bahlo's research interests include statistics, genetics, bioinformatics, and population genetics. Her work has "led to the discovery of new genes involved in genetic diseases such as deafness and epilepsy".
Go to Profile#1986
Jennifer A. Pietenpol
#146443
Overall Influence
#1987
Ina Vandebroek
#137875
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Ina Vandebroek is an ethnobotanist working in the areas of floristics, ethnobotany and community health. Since 2005, she has worked at the New York Botanical Garden in the Institute of Economic Botany. She has worked on ethnobotanical projects in North America, the Caribbean, and South America.
Go to Profile#1988
Susan J. Clark
#138090
Overall Influence
Professor Susan J. Clark is an Australian biomedical researcher in epigenetics of development and cancer. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2015, and is a National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Principal Research Fellow and Research Director and Head of Genomics and Epigenetics Division at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. Clark developed the first method for bisulphite sequencing for DNA methylation analysis and used it to establish that the methylation machinery of mammalian cells is capable of both maintenance and de novo methylation at CpNpG sites and showed is inheritable.
Go to Profile#1989
Margaret Sabine
#125314
Overall Influence
1928 - 2011 (83 years)
Margaret Sabine was the pioneering virologist for Australian veterinary schools. She conducted studies on viruses in cats and horses, with her characterisation of different equine viruses being her most significant scientific contribution. Other achievements include becoming head of the department of veterinary pathology and bacteriology, being chairwoman of the NSW Animal Welfare Advisory Council, an honorary Veterinary Science degree at the University of Sydney, and being a co-discoverer of viral interference.
Go to Profile#1990
Deneb Karentz
#110881
Overall Influence
Deneb Karentz is full-time faculty, professor, and chair of the Biology Department at University of San Francisco. Her research focuses on the ultraviolet photobiology of marine organisms and understanding their strategies for protection from UV exposure, particularly in relation to the ecological implications of Antarctic ozone depletion.
Go to Profile#1991
Mary Ellen Sanders
#146719
Overall Influence
#1992
Lin He
#61420
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Lin He is a Chinese-American molecular biologist. She is an associate professor of cell and developmental biology at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, where she leads a lab focusing on identifying non-coding RNA which may play a role in tumorigenesis and tumor maintenance.
Go to Profile#1993
Helen Foot Buell
#117474
Overall Influence
1902 - 1995 (93 years)
Helen Foot Buell was an American botanist, algologist, ecologist, and editor. Early life and education Helen Foot was born in Kalispell, Montana, the daughter of Charles Henry Foot and Theresa M. Polley Foot. Both of her parents were born in Minnesota; her father was a lawyer. She graduated from Flathead County High School, and completed a Ph.D. in Phycology at the University of Minnesota in 1938, funded in part with a fellowship from the American Association of University Women.
Go to Profile#1994
Michele Swanson
#138843
Overall Influence
Michele S. Swanson is an American biologist who is a professor of microbiology at the University of Michigan. She has investigated the water-borne pathogen Legionella pneumophila. Swanson is interested in the metabolic cues that underpin the virulence of L. pneumophila and how it is transmitted to humans. She served as president of the American Society for Microbiology in 2018.
Go to Profile#1995
Dana Bergstrom
#106259
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Dana Michelle Bergstrom is a senior researcher at the Australian Antarctic Division most notable for her work on identifying and mitigating risks against Antarctic and Sub Antarctic Ecosystems. Early life and education Bergstrom is from Sydney, Australia. She went to Hunters Hill High School and undertook her undergraduate study at Macquarie University . Her postgraduate study was also Macquarie University, where she completed a master's degree. Bergstrom travelled to Macquarie Island in 1983 for her Masters fieldwork, this made her one of the earliest female scientists to go south in the Australian Antarctic program for sustained field work.
Go to Profile#1996
Priyanka Joshi
#114593
Overall Influence
Priyanka Joshi is a biochemist who is a research fellow at University of California, Berkeley, where she studies calorie restriction and its effect upon lifespan. Previously, she was an Everitt Butterfield research fellow at Downing College, Cambridge, where she worked at the university's Centre for Misfolding Diseases studying the metabolic precursors which influence the aggregation of proteins such as amyloid beta, which are thought to cause Alzheimer's disease. In 2018, she was listed in the Forbes "30 under 30" list of innovators in science and healthcare and the Vogue 25 list of influent...
Go to Profile#1997
Vivian Li
#139698
Overall Influence
Vivian Li is a Hong Kong-born cell and developmental biologist working in cancer research at London's Francis Crick Institute. She has been researching how stem cells in the human bowel are programmed to ensure a healthy organ and what goes wrong when cancer develops. She is known for her work on the Wnt signalling pathway, discovering a new way that a molecule called Wnt is activated in bowel cancer. She won a Future Leaders in Cancer Research Prize in part for this discovery.
Go to Profile#1998
Deborah K. Morrison
#115260
Overall Influence
Deborah Kay Morrison is an American cell biologist who is the chief of the Laboratory of Cell and Developmental Signaling at the National Cancer Institute. She conducts research characterizing the RAS pathway and the RAF family kinases and leads efforts to design new therapeutic strategies for cancer treatment.
Go to Profile#1999
Lyn Chitty
#126685
Overall Influence
Dame Lyn Susan Chitty is a British physician and Professor of Genetics and Fetal Medicine at University College London. She is the deputy director of the National Institute for Health and Care Research Great Ormond Street Hospital Biomedical Research Centre. She is the 2022 president of the International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis. Her research considers non-invasive prenatal diagnostics. She was made a Dame in the 2022 New Year Honours.
Go to Profile#2000
Alison Van Eenennaam
#135809
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Alison L. Van Eenennaam is a Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Department of Animal Science at the University of California, Davis and runs the Animal Genomics and Biotechnology Laboratory. She has served on national committees such as the USDA National Advisory Committee on Biotechnology in the 21st Century and was awarded the 2014 Borlaug CAST Communication Award. Van Eenennaam writes the Biobeef Blog.
Go to Profile