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,

#2351

Laure Aurelian

#167263

Overall Influence

#2352

Susan Shur-Fen Gau

#91506

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Susan Shur-Fen Gau , also known as Susan Gau, Shur-Fen Gau, Gau Shur-Fen and in Chinese:高淑芬, is a Taiwanese psychiatrist and academic with specialized in psychiatry, psychology, epidemiology, preventive medicine, occupational therapy, and brain and mind sciences.

#2353

Irina Ivshina

#167451

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Irina Borysivna Ivshina is a Russian microbiologist. She is head of the Laboratory of Alcanotrophic Microorganisms of the Institute of Ecology and Genetics of Microorganisms . She is a professor at the Perm State University. She is vice-president of the Russian Microbiological Society. She was an editor for Molecules.

#2354

Natalie Porat-Shliom

#63354

Overall Influence

Natalie Porat-Shliom is an Israeli-American cell biologist and microscopist specialized in intravital microscopy to research mitochondrial structure. She is a NIH Stadtman Investigator and head of the cell biology and imaging section at the National Cancer Institute.

#2355

Cheryl Lyn Walker

#156181

Overall Influence

Cheryl Lyn Walker is an American molecular biologist. Early life and education Walker was born and raised in Oak Cliff of South Dallas, Texas. Her father was an entrepreneur who opened the first Spaghetti Warehouse restaurant. Upon graduating high school, she majored in molecular biology at the University of Colorado Boulder before earning her PhD in molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She then enrolled at Baylor College of Medicine for her medical degree.

#2356

Marlys Koschinsky

#145881

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Marlys Laverne Koschinsky is a Canadian cardiovascular researcher. , she is the executive director at the University of Western Ontario's Robarts Research Institute. Koschinsky formally served as Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Windsor.

#2357

Marianne Holmer

#167604

Overall Influence

#2358

Dawn Bowdish

#155239

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Dawn M. E. Bowdish, is a Canadian immunologist and currently a professor in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. She is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Aging & Immunity. She is known for several discoveries including the immunomodulatory properties of the antimicrobial peptide LL-37, how MARCO signalling complex recognizes Mycobacterium tuberculosis, age-associated inflammation and its effects on clearing pneumococcal pneumonia and how the aging gut microbiome drives age-associated inflammation.

#2359

Moninya Roughan

#110418

Overall Influence

Moninya Roughan is a professor of Oceanography at the University of New South Wales Australia,. Roughan is the head of the Coastal and Regional Oceanography Lab and is an authority on the oceanography of the East Australian Current. She has led major projects for industry, government, the Australian Research Council and the New Zealand Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. She has held leadership roles in Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System since 2007.

#2360

Barbara Ann Whitlock

#108752

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Barbara Ann Whitlock is a botanist, who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, with her dissertation Systematics and evolution of chocolate and its relatives , an interest which continues. She has been working in the Department of Biology, University of Miami from at least 2015, where she works on tropical biology, and ecology and evolutionary biology.

#2361

Lynne Quarmby

#150526

Overall Influence

Lynne Quarmby is a Canadian scientist, activist, and politician. She is a professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. She was a candidate for the Green Party of Canada in Burnaby North—Seymour in the 2015 federal election, and is the Green Party of Canada's Science Policy Critic.

#2362

Elizabeth Murchison

#107201

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Elizabeth Murchison is a British-Australian geneticist, Professor of Comparative Oncology and Genetics at the University of Cambridge, UK. The ongoing research of her group focuses on the known existing clonally transmissible cancers arising in mammals. These are cancers that can be passed on between individuals by the transfer of living cancer cells that somehow manage to evade the immune system of their hosts.

#2363

Zuzana Kečkéšová

#137796

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Zuzana Kečkéšová is a Slovak-American molecular biologist at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She investigates the reasons that certain organs are protected from cancer.

#2364

Elizabeth A. Fulton

#150502

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Elizabeth A. Fulton , also known as Beth Fulton, is an Australian ecosystem modeller, who was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2022. She is a Research Group Leader at CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere in Hobart, Tasmania.

#2365

Dawn Sumner

#116405

Overall Influence

Dawn Yvonne Sumner is an American geologist, planetary scientist, and astrobiologist. She is a professor at the University of California, Davis. Sumner's research includes evaluating microbial communities in Antarctic lakes, exploration of Mars via the Curiosity rover, and characterization of microbial communities in the lab and from ancient geologic samples. She is an investigator on the NASA Mars Science Laboratory and was Chair of the UC Davis Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences from 2014 to 2016. She is Fellow of the Geological Society of America.

#2366

Constance Tom Noguchi

#136504

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Constance Tom Noguchi is a research physicist, Chief of the Molecular Cell Biology Section, and Dean of the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences Graduate School at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health . Noguchi studies the underlying genetics, metabolism, and treatment of sickle cell disease and of erythropoietin and its effects on metabolism.

#2367

Sydney Kustu

#151290

Overall Influence

1943 - 2014 (71 years)

Sydney Govons Kustu was an American biologist and a professor of biochemistry at University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her pioneering research on the regulation of Nitrogen metabolism in bacteria.

#2368

Bettine van Vuuren

Bettine van Vuuren

#98485

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Bettine van Vuuren is the Registrar and a Member of the Executive at the University of Johannesburg. She is also a Professor of Zoology and Director of the Centre for Ecological Genomics and Wildlife Conservation at the University of Johannesburg.

#2369

Ximena Vélez Liendo

#137644

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Ximena Vélez Liendo is a Bolivian conservation biologist whose work focus on the ecology of the Andean bear, known as jukumari in aymara language, and its conservation in Bolivia and the rest of South America.

#2370

Michelle Cailin Mack

#167815

Overall Influence

Michelle Cailin Mack is an ecologist working on the connections between plants and climate in polar regions. She is a fellow of the Ecological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union. She currently holds the title of Regent's Professor at Northern Arizona University.

#2371

Helene Muller-Landau

#160305

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Helene Muller-Landau is a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Institution. Her research focuses on tropical forest diversity and climate interactions with tropical forests. Education Helene Muller-Landau received her bachelor's from the Swathmore College in Mathematics and Statistics. She received both her masters and PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University.

#2372

Déborah Bourc'his

#153086

Overall Influence

Déborah Bourc'his is a French researcher in Epigenetics. She is currently a team leader at the Curie Institute . Her research has been awarded the prize Liliane-Bettencourt for life sciences. Education and academic appointments In 1996., she joins the laboratory of Evani Viegas-Pequignot to do a PhD in Genetics in at the Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital. There, she identifies methylation mutations on DNMT3B.

#2373

Flaminia Catteruccia

Flaminia Catteruccia

#139123

Overall Influence

Flaminia Catteruccia is an Italian professor of immunology and infectious disease at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, studying the interactions between malaria and the Anopheles mosquitoes that transmit the parasites.

#2374

Vanessa Barrs

#74352

Overall Influence

Vanessa Rosemary Duke Barrs is a veterinary researcher in feline infectious diseases. Barrs established clinical research and specialist veterinary services at the Valentine Charlton Cat Centre within the University of Sydney where she is also Professor of Feline Medicine and Infectious Diseases. Barrs discovered Aspergillus felis, an environmental fungus that causes invasive, intractable disease in cats, dogs and humans.

#2375

Barbara Howlett

#119020

Overall Influence

Barbara Jane Howlett is an Australian fungal plant pathologist. Biography Howlett grew up on a farm, which is a main reason for her interest in agriculture. Howlett received her BSc with honors from the University of Melbourne in 1970, her MSc from the Australian National University in 1973, and her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 1981. She is currently a professor at the University of Melbourne.

#2376

Lois H. Tiffany

#108087

Overall Influence

1924 - 2009 (85 years)

Lois Hattery Tiffany was a mycologist who taught for over 50 years at Iowa State University and was known as "Iowa's mushroom lady". She won a number of awards, including becoming the first recipient of both the Mycological Society of America's Weston Award and the Iowa Governor’s Medal for Science Teaching. She published on many different aspects of fungal life, but her special area of research was Iowa's prairie fungi.

#2377

Michelle Antoine

#87502

Overall Influence

Michelle Antoine is a Trinidadian neuroscientist. She is acting chief of the section on neural circuits in the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism . Her research has redefined the classical notion of excitatory-inhibitory balance and its role in autism. She continues to study the synaptic and circuit pathways that contribute to nervous system disorders, autism spectrum disorder in particular.

#2378

Sabine Spijker

#155272

Overall Influence

Sabine Spijker is a Dutch neuroscientist who is a full professor and team leader at the Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology department of the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research at the VU University Amsterdam.

#2379

Kathryn Ayscough

#163458

Overall Influence

Kathryn Rachel Ayscough is a professor of molecular cell biology and head of the department of biomedical science at the University of Sheffield. She was awarded the 2002 Society for Experimental Biology President's Medal. Her research investigates the role of the actin cytoskeleton in membrane trafficking and cell organisation.

#2380

Verena Tunnicliffe

#168304

Overall Influence

Verena Julia Tunnicliffe is a Canadian Marine Biologist and Professor of the University of Victoria. Since 2002, she has held the position of Canada Research Chair in Deep Ocean Research. Her research on hydrothermal systems helped establish Canada's first Endeavor Hot Vents Marine Protected Area. Her research has also led to the discovery of over 80 new species of marine life.

#2381

Catherine Margaret Shachaf

#135500

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Catherine Margaret Shachaf is an Indian cell biologist. She previously held an instructor position at Stanford University School of Medicine, and has made ground-breaking discoveries in cancer research. Shachaf has spoken at scientific conferences and has published more than 17 journal articles. Her leading work was published in Nature , "MYC Inactivation Uncovers Pluripotent Differentiation and Tumor Dormancy in Hepatocellular Cancer." Shachaf is on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Green Nanotechnology.

#2382

Maria Àngels Cardona i Florit

#146875

Overall Influence

1940 - 1991 (51 years)

Maria Àngels Cardona i Florit was a biologist, ecologist and botanist from Menorca, who worked mainly in Barcelona. Biography She lived during her early childhood in Ciutadella before moving to Barcelona to go to university.

#2383

Anna Gloyn

#78320

Overall Influence

Anna L Gloyn is a geneticist, who is Professor of Pediatrics and Genetics at the Stanford University. She was the recipient of the Minkowski Prize in 2014 for her research into causal mechanisms of diabetes pathogenesis. Her work has contributed to improved treatment options for people with rare forms of diabetes and helped advance our understanding of type 2 diabetes.

#2384

Judith D. Zuk

#141459

Overall Influence

1951 - 2007 (56 years)

Judith Daria Zuk was an American horticulturist, author and conservationist who served as president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden from 1990 to 2005. Biography A native of Canandaigua, New York, Zuk attended Rutgers University, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in botany. Following graduate studies at the University of Delaware, she received a master's degree in public garden administration. Prior to accepting the Brooklyn position, she held the post of director of Swarthmore College's Scott Arboretum.

#2385

Joellen Louise Russell

#105034

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Joellen Louise Russell is an American oceanographer and climate scientist. Russell is a professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona. In Tucson, AZ, with joint appointments in the Departments of Lunar and Planetary Sciences, Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, and in the Mathematics Department’s Program in Applied Mathematics. She was named as the Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair of Integrative Science in 2017. She was named as University Distinguish Professor in 2021.

#2386

Martha Gillette

#111317

Overall Influence

Martha Ulbrick Gillette is a chronobiologist and neurobiologist with research focusing on the effects of circadian clocks on integrative brain functions metabolism and the molecular mechanisms involved in signaling pathways. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#2387

Magdalena K. P. Smith Meyer

#106236

Overall Influence

1931 - 2004 (73 years)

Magdalena Kathrina Petronella Smith Meyer was a South African acarologist who was regarded as a world authority on plant-feeding mites of agricultural importance and was known as the "mother of red-spider mites of the world". She described more than 700 new species and 25 new genera, mostly of mites of agricultural importance. Meyer was involved in the promotion of biological control of mites using predatory mites, spiders and insects.

#2388

Rajani A. Bhisey

#84680

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Rajani A. Bhisey is an Indian scientist. She specializes in the field of environmental carcinogenesis and molecular epidemiology of cancer, occupational hazards. Education Bhisey completed her Bachelor of Science degree from University of Bombay and joined the Indian Cancer Research Centre , Mumbai, as a research fellow to work for her Master of Science by research degree. She worked on skin carcinogenesis using electron microscope as the main tool, which led to her PhD degree from the University of Bombay in 1974.

#2389

Lee Berger

#133156

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Lee Berger , is an Australian biologist and veterinarian, who discovered during her PhD that the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis was responsible for the decline and extinction of hundreds of amphibian species.

#2390

Katja Fennel

#113738

Overall Influence

Katja Fennel is an oceanographer studying the effects of climate change on marine ecosystems. She is a full professor in the Department of Oceanography at Dalhousie University, a former Canada Research Chair in marine prediction, and co-editor-in-chief of the journal Biogeosciences.

#2391

Benedita Barata da Rocha

#115756

Overall Influence

1949 - 2021 (72 years)

Benedita Barata da Rocha was a Portuguese immunologist. She earned her M.D. 1972 from the University of Lisbon, and her Ph.D. 1978 from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. She was "directeur de recherche classe exceptionel" of the CNRS and director of a research unit of the INSERM at the Necker Institute, Paris, France. Her major scientific contributions are in the areas of T cell immune tolerance, T cell memory and development of intraepithelial lymphocytes.

#2392

Karen Kidd

#58327

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Karen Ann Kidd is a Canadian aquatic ecotoxicologist. She is the Jarislowsky Chair in Environment and Health and Professor of Biology at McMaster University and member of the International Joint Commission.

#2393

Katerina Akassoglou

#147834

Overall Influence

Katerina Akassoglou is a neuroimmunologist who is a Senior Investigator and Director of In Vivo Imaging Research at the Gladstone Institutes. Akassoglou holds faculty positions as a Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. Akassoglou has pioneered investigations of blood-brain barrier integrity and development of neurological diseases. She found that compromised blood-brain barrier integrity leads to fibrinogen leakage into the brain inducing neurodegeneration. Akassoglou is internationally recognized for her scientific discoveries.

#2394

Camilla Bellone

#158975

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Camilla Bellone is an Italian neuroscientist and assistant professor in the Department of Basic Neuroscience at the University of Geneva, in Switzerland. Bellone's laboratory explores the molecular mechanisms and neural circuits underlying social behavior and probes how defects at the molecular and circuit level give rise to psychiatric disease states such as Autism Spectrum Disorders.

#2395

Glaci Zancan

#116243

Overall Influence

1935 - 2007 (72 years)

Glaci Teresinha Zancan was a Brazilian biochemist, president of the Brazilian Society for the Progress of the Science from 1999 to 2003. She made her post doctorate at the University of Buenos Aires, when working with Luis Federico Leloir, Nobel prize of Medicine of 1970.

#2396

Helen A. Stafford

#168622

Overall Influence

1922 - 2011 (89 years)

Helen Adele Stafford was an American plant physiologist and phytochemist. She was from 1977 to 1978 the president of the Phytochemical Society of North America. Biography Helen A. Stafford attended Quaker schools in Philadelphia. She became interested in botany when tending her father's garden.

#2397

Karen Louise Wilson

#153877

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Karen Louise Wilson is an Australian botanist. Some of her research interests are: systematics, phylogenetic and biogeographic studies on Cyperaceae, Casuarinaceae, Juncaceae and Polygonaceae. Other professional interests include botanical nomenclature; botanical history, biodiversity, informatics and scientific editing.

#2398

Judi Hewitt

#132665

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Judith Elaine Hewitt is a Finnish-New Zealand bio-statistician and soft-sediment benthic ecologist. She currently works at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, and have with an association with the University of Auckland.

#2399

Jacqueline Rowarth

#114867

Overall Influence

Jacqueline Sara Rowarth is a New Zealand agronomist, dairy farmer and science administrator. Career Rowarth has an Agricultural Science degree with first class honours in Environmental Agriculture, and obtained a PhD in Soil science from Massey University, with a 1987 thesis titled 'Phosphate cycling in grazed hill-country pasture. Rowarth taught Plant Science at Lincoln University. She returned to New Zealand to Massey University as full professor.

#2400

Linda Richards

#150536

Overall Influence

Linda Richards is an Australian researcher at Queensland Brain Institute at the University of Queensland. Early life and education Richards undertook undergraduate studies at Monash University, and at the University of Melbourne, where she was awarded a Bachelor of Science in 1990. Her PhD, researching the determination of neuronal lineage of in the developing spinal cord, was conferred in 1995 from the laboratory of Perry Bartlett, at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne.

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