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

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#2001

Suzanne Mary Prober

#147125

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Suzanne Mary Prober is an Australian botanist and ecologist. She received her Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of Sydney in 1985 and a PhD in Vegetation Ecology from the Australian National University in 1990.

#2002

Nuzhat Husain

#29898

Overall Influence

Nuzhat Husain is an Indian pathologist. She is former director of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow. Education She completed her MBBS at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University in 1985 and MD from King George Medical College, University of Lucknow in 1989 with high merit and several awards including the President of India’s silver medal for best woman student at the University in 1985 and the KB Kunwar Gold medal for best thesis in 1989, She also worked as a post doctoral fellow at Molecular Neuro-oncology Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University during 1997.

#2003

Julia Koricheva

#145972

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Julia Koricheva is an ecologist in the UK. She is professor of ecology at Royal Holloway, University of London and she researches ecosystem services in forests, the interactions between insects and plants and is an expert in meta-analysis.

#2004

Zodwa Dlamini

#90043

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Zodwa Dlamini is a South African biochemist and Ex-deputy Vice Chancellor for Research at the Mangosuthu University of Technology. She researches molecular oncology. She is a former Vice President of the South African Medical Research Council and is a member of the Council for Scientific Advisers for the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.

#2005

Rosario Pivonello

#147555

Overall Influence

#2006

Ann Conolly

#88823

Overall Influence

1917 - 2010 (93 years)

Ann P. Conolly was a British botanist and teacher who contributed to quaternary botany and conducted important early work on the history and spread of Japanese Knotweed in the UK . Academic career She attended the University of Cambridge from 1936 to 1940 and studied Natural Sciences. However, it was the university's policy at that time to not award degrees to women. She undertook doctoral studies on quaternary botany between 1940 and 1943, supported by a Rigby and a Francis Maitland Balfour studentships, under the supervision of Professor Harry Godwin. Her work contributed to Godwin's landmark book History of the British Flora published by CUP in 1956.

#2007

Sarah Medland

#112197

Overall Influence

Sarah Elizabeth Medland is Professor and Psychiatric Genetics Group Leader at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Herston, Brisbane, Australia. She played a major role in the development of the ENIGMA brain imaging consortium.

#2008

Catharine Mans Bosio

Catharine Mans Bosio

#129527

Overall Influence

Catharine "Katy" Mans Bosio is an American biologist. She is a senior investigator and chief of the immunity to pulmonary pathogens section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

#2009

Deborah Steinberg

#84999

Overall Influence

Deborah K. Steinberg is an American Antarctic biological oceanographer who works on interdisciplinary oceanographic research programs. Steinberg's research focuses on the role that zooplankton play in marine food webs and the global carbon cycle, and how these small drifting animals are affected by changes in climate.

#2010

Patricia Woolley

#117619

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Patricia Woolley is Australian zoologist recognised for her work with marsupials, specifically the dasyurid family. Pseudantechinus woolleyae is named for her. Biography Patricia Woolley was born in 1932 in Denmark, Western Australia. Her mother was a nurse and her father a medical practitioner. She completed her Junior Certificate at Albany High School. After moving to Perth, Woolley sought to study science at Perth Modern School however at that time women were not allowed to study chemistry at the school, so she attended Perth Technical College and later Leederville Technical College instead.

#2011

Mary Cannon

#106276

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Mary Cannon is an Irish psychiatrist, research scientist, public figure and former member of the Cannabis Risk Alliance. She has received the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland's "Doctors Award" for psychiatry, and is among the most highly cited scientists in the world. Cannon is known for her views on cannabis, being described as 'anti-cannabis'. She is best known in the field of psychiatry for her study of the risk factors for mental illness in young people.

#2012

Jessica Borger

#38745

Overall Influence

Jessica Geraldine Borger is an Australian T Cell immunologist, lecturer and graduate course coordinator at the Central Clinical School, Monash University. Her research has added to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of T cell function. Additionally, Borger is a news and commentary editor for Immunology & Cell Biology and a guest associate editor for Frontiers in Immunology, and a reviewer for several academic journals. Jessica also advocates for gender equality in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in her position a member of the Gender Equity, Diversity and Inclusion...

#2013

Veena Kumari

#148159

Overall Influence

Veena Kumari is Professor of Experimental Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. Selected publications

#2014

Madelaine Böhme

#144547

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Madelaine Böhme is a German palaeontologist and professor of palaeoclimatology at the University of Tübingen. Böhme was born in 1967 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She studied at the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology and Leipzig University, completing her doctorate there in 1997 and habilitation at LMU Munich in 2003. In 2009 she became professor of terrestrial palaeoclimatology in Tübingen.

#2015

Sheue-yann Cheng

#98917

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Sheue-yann Cheng is an American molecular geneticist who pioneered the development of mouse models to understand the molecular basis of diseases due to mutations of thyroid hormone receptors. Cheng is a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute and chief of the gene regulation section.

#2016

Emily Bernhardt

#136883

Overall Influence

Emily S. Bernhardt is an American ecosystem ecologist, biogeochemist, and professor at Duke University. Bernhardt studies the effects of land use change, global change, and chemical pollution on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and is the co-author of an award-winning text book on biogeochemistry. She also served as the president of the Society for Freshwater Science from 2016 to 2017.

#2017

Evelyn Telfer

#85610

Overall Influence

Evelyn Elizabeth Telfer is a reproductive biologist and professor at the University of Edinburgh. She leads a research team which has successfully grown immature human eggs to maturity in the lab, and discovered that human ovaries are capable of growing new eggs. In 2018 she was named one of Porter magazine's Incredible Women of 2018. In January 2019 she delivered the Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture at the Joint Fertility Societies Meeting in Birmingham: Fertility 2019. The Society of Reproduction and Fertility presented her with their Distinguished Scientist award. Professor Telfer was presen...

#2018

Isabelle Mansuy

#134412

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Isabelle M. Mansuy is a professor in neuroepigenetics in the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich and the Department of Health Science and Technology of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. She is known for her work on the mechanisms of epigenetic inheritance in relation to childhood trauma.

#2019

Teresa Przytycka

#118058

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Teresa Maria Przytycka is a Polish-American computational biologist who works as a senior investigator in the Computational Biology Branch of the National Center for Biotechnology Information , where she heads the Algorithmic Methods in Computational and Systems Biology section. She started her research career in parallel algorithms; at the NCBI, her research takes a computational approach to problems in systems biology involving cancer, gene regulation, and the analysis of massive data.

#2020

Meredith Blackwell

Meredith Blackwell

#114186

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Meredith May Blackwell is an American mycologist, known as one of the world's leading experts on fungi associated with arthropods. Education and career Meredith Blackwell graduated in 1961 with B.S. in biology from the University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette and in 1963 with M.S. in biology from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. She graduated in 1973 with Ph.D. in botany from the University of Texas at Austin with thesis "A Developmental and Taxonomic Study of Protophysarum phloiogenum" under the supervision of C. J. Alexopoulos.

#2021

Audrey Cahn

#82680

Overall Influence

1905 - 2008 (103 years)

Audrey Josephine Cahn was an Australian microbiologist and nutritionist. The daughter of Prof. William Alexander Osborne and Ethel Elizabeth Goodson, a medical practitioner and industrial hygienist, she was born Audrey Josephine Osborne in Melbourne and grew up on the campus of the University of Melbourne. She earned a Bachelor of Agricultural Science at the university in 1929 and, later, received a diploma in dietetics. She first worked as a microbiologist and food analyst for Kraft.

#2022

Anna Amtmann

#139395

Overall Influence

Anna Amtmann is a German scientist. She is professor for Molecular Plant Physiology at the University of Glasgow. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Plant, Cell & Environment. Early life and education Amtmann studied languages, mathematics and biology at the University of Paris and Heidelberg University. She was an Erasmus Programme student at the University of Barcelona. Amtmann completed her graduate degrees in biology in the laboratory of Dietrich Gradmann at the University of Göttingen. Her doctoral research involved the use of electrophysiology to study unicellular marine algae,...

#2023

Amy McCune

#111374

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Amy Reed McCune is an American ecologist and evolutionary biologist. She is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University. McCune specializes in the history of life through the study of fishes. Her lab focuses on evolution with methodologies including paleobiology, phylogenetics, genetics and morphology.

#2024

Laura Hewitson

#100006

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Laura Charlotte Hewitson is a British-born primate researcher noted for her work in the fields of reproductive biology and behavior. She is an affiliate scientist at the Washington National Primate Research Center and an adjunct associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Additionally, she is the Research Director of the Johnson Center for Child Health and Development in Austin, Texas. Hewitson was a staff scientist at Oregon Health Sciences University from 1997 to 2001. From 2002 to 2010 she was an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology an...

#2025

Luisa Eugenia Navas

Luisa Eugenia Navas

#90508

Overall Influence

1920 - 2020 (100 years)

Luisa Eugenia Navas Bustamante was a Chilean pharmacist and botanist. Life On 9 May 1951 she received a degree in chemistry and pharmacy. That same year she became Assistant Chair of Botany in the School of Chemistry and Pharmacy of the University of Chile. In 1958 she was “Professor extraordinarius”, and assistant of Hugo Gunckel in the Instituto Pedagógico in the section of the cryptogamic plants and finally chair Professor in the Faculty Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences the 1985. She studied seaweed, she concurred with his father to the Marine Biology Station at Montemar. With authorization of the Dean of Pharmacy, she went twice a week National Museum of Natural History of Santiago.

#2026

Anna K. Mapp

#93144

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Anna Kathryn Mapp is an American chemist and the Edwin Vedejs collegiate professor of Chemistry. In 2013, Mapp joined the Michigan Life Sciences Institute as a research professor. Mapp served as the Director of the Program in Chemical Biology at the University of Michigan until 2019 when she accepted a position as the Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Initiatives at the University of Michigan Rackham graduate school.

#2027

Jennifer Pett-Ridge

#115310

Overall Influence

Jennifer Pett-Ridge is an American biologist who is a senior staff scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of California, Merced. Her research makes use of systems biology and geochemistry to uncover function in microbial communities. She was awarded a 2021 United States Department of Energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award.

#2028

Marcela Maus

#114322

Overall Influence

Marcela V. Maus is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Cellular Immunotherapy Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. She works on immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer, using genetically engineered T cells to target malignancies .

#2029

Lisa Gunaydin

#106766

Overall Influence

Lisa Gunaydin is an American neuroscientist and assistant professor at the Weill Institute for Neurosciences at the University of California San Francisco. Gunaydin helped discover optogenetics in the lab of Karl Deisseroth and now uses this technique in combination with neural and behavioral recordings to probe the neural circuits underlying emotional behaviors.

#2030

Anne Moscona

#145887

Overall Influence

Anne Moscona is an American virologist and pediatrician. She is best known for identifying cell entry mechanisms for enveloped respiratory viruses, elucidating general infection mechanisms that apply to parainfluenza virus, Nipah virus, measles virus, and other viruses, and for applying this knowledge to identify antiviral strategies to prevent infection by viruses including SARS-CoV-2. She is frequently consulted as a medical expert during viral outbreaks, including epidemic and pandemic influenza. Since 2016, she has served as the Sherie L. Morrison Professor Microbiology & Immunology, Prof...

#2031

Kaarina Sivonen

#148843

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

#2032

Helen Donis-Keller

#130778

Overall Influence

Helen Donis-Keller is the Michael E. Moody Professor and Professor of Biology and Art at Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts. Education and career Donis-Keller has a B.Sc. and an H.B.Sc. from Lakehead University. She earned her Ph.D. at Harvard University under the direction of Walter Gilbert in 1979. After employment at the biotechnology companies Biogen and Collaborative Research, she joined the faculty at Washington University School of Medicine. In 2001, she earn an MFA in studio art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Tufts University and she joined the faculty at the Olin College of Engineering.

#2033

Sheena Derry

#148861

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

#2034

Brenda Rapp

#117072

Overall Influence

Brenda Carla Rapp professor and chair of the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience at Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University. In 2010, she was appointed joint editor-in-chief of the journal Cognitive Neuropsychology.

#2035

Deborah MacLatchy

#67722

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Deborah Lynn MacLatchy is a Canadian ecotoxicologist and comparative endocrinologist. She is the seventh President and Vice-Chancellor of Wilfrid Laurier University, having formally led the International Office at the University of New Brunswick. She also served as President and Council Member of the Canadian Society of Zoologists and Chair of the Science Directors of the Canadian Rivers Institute. In 2012, MacLatchy was recognized as one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women in a Top 100 list compiled by the Women’s Executive Network.

#2036

Anne Plant

#41611

Overall Influence

Anne L. Plant is an American biochemist. She is a Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology where she was previously chief of the biosystems and biomaterials division. Plant investigates measurements and models of cell populations. She is a recipient of the United States Department of Commerce's Bronze and Silver Medals. Plant is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#2037

Margaret Pericak-Vance

#92833

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Margaret Ann Pericak-Vance is an American human geneticist who is the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Professor of Human Genetics and director of the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics at the University of Miami. She is known for her research on the genetics of common human diseases. This research has led to a number of findings of genes that increase the risk of certain diseases, such as apolipoprotein E and Alzheimer's disease, IL7R and multiple sclerosis, and complement factor H and macular degeneration.

#2038

Sophie Charlotte Ducker

#106469

Overall Influence

1909 - 2004 (95 years)

Sophie Charlotte Ducker was a German-born Australian botanist. She was awarded the Mueller Medal in 1996. Early life and education Sophie Charlotte von Klemperer was born in Berlin on 9 April 1909. She was the daughter of Victor von Klemperer, a Jewish German who converted to Christianity upon marriage, and his wife Sophie von Klemperer .

#2039

Nicole Prause

#119943

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Nicole Prause is an American neuroscientist researching human sexual behavior, addiction, and the physiology of sexual response. She is also the founder of Liberos LLC, an independent research institute.

#2040

Regina Sullivan

#135494

Overall Influence

Regina Sullivan is an American developmental behavioral neuroscientist, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine and senior research scientist in the Emotional Brain Institute at The Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research.

#2041

Shirleen Roeder

#123729

Overall Influence

Glenna Shirleen Roeder is a geneticist known for identifying and characterizing the yeast genes that regulate the process of meiosis with particular emphasis on synapsis. Education and career Roeder has a B.Sc. from Dalhousie University and earned her Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Toronto. Following her Ph.D. she was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University before moving to the faculty at Yale University in 1981. In 2001 she was named the Eugene Higgins Professor of Genetics in the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Department at Yale University. Roeder retired in 2012 a...

#2042

Milena Penkowa

#142823

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Milena Penkowa is a Danish neuroscientist who was a professor at the Panum Institute at the University of Copenhagen from 2009–2010. In 2010 she was convicted of fraud and embezzlement of funds from The Danish Society of Neuroscience. In the same year, she was suspended by the University of Copenhagen and consequently resigned her professorship. In 2012, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty concluded that she had been guilty of scientific misconduct. As of 2020 Penkowa has had nine of her research publications retracted, and four others have received expressions of concern.

#2043

Vivian Irish

#145590

Overall Influence

Vivian Irish is an American evolutionary biologist. She is currently Chair & Eaton Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. Her research focuses on floral development. She was president of Society for Developmental Biology in 2012 and currently serves as an editor for the journals Developmental Biology and Evolution & Development.

#2044

Brigitte Autran

#149388

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

#2045

Alba Marina Cotes

#114410

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Alba Marina Cotes Prado , is a Colombian chemist and biologist, known for her research on biological pest control In 2009, Cotes became the first Latin American woman in receive a Honoris Causa degree by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

#2046

Nazneen Rahman

#125373

Overall Influence

Sabera Nazneen Rahman is a geneticist who specialises in cancer research and is a non-executive director for Astra Zeneca. She was previously head of Genetics and Epidemiology at the Institute of Cancer Research.

#2047

Suzanne Higgs

#138057

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Suzanne Higgs is an English psychologist. She is a Professor in the Psychobiology of Appetite at the University of Birmingham and was editor-in-chief of the journal Appetite from 2012-2022. Early life and education Higgs earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master's degree from the Somerville College, Oxford in 1989 before receiving her PhD in psychology from Durham University. She completed her post-doctoral research at Oxford before earning an academic position at the University of Birmingham in 1999.

#2048

Donna E. Davies

#141598

Overall Influence

Donna Elizabeth Davies is a British biochemist and professor of respiratory cell and molecular biology at the University of Southampton. In 2003, Davies was the co-founder of Synairgen, an interferon-beta drug designed to treat patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

#2049

Christina Curtis

#109054

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Christina Curtis is an American scientist who is a Professor of Medicine, Genetics and Biomedical Data Science and an Endowed Scholar at Stanford University where her research investigates the evolution of tumors. She is director of Artificial Intelligence and Cancer Genomics at Stanford University School of Medicine and is on the board of directors of the American Association for Cancer Research.

#2050

Nina Bassuk

#124831

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Nina Lauren Bassuk is a professor and program leader of the Urban Horticulture Institute at Cornell University. Education Bassuk received her B.S. in Horticulture from Cornell University in 1974 and her Ph.D. in Horticulture from the University of London in 1980.

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