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 …
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List of the most influential female people in Biology,
#2401
Kimryn Rathmell
#167832
Overall Influence
W. Kimryn Rathmell is an American physician-scientist whose work focuses on the research and treatment of patients with kidney cancers. She is the Hugh Jackson Morgan Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center , and Physician-in-Chief for Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital and Clinics in Nashville, Tennessee. On Nov. 17, 2023, Rathmell was announced as the intended next Director of the National Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile#2402
Franca Ronchese
#163930
Overall Influence
Franca Ronchese is an Italian-New Zealand immunologist. She currently leads the immune cell biology programme at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in Wellington, New Zealand and is a research professor at Victoria University of Wellington.
Go to Profile#2403
Anita H. Clayton
#157881
Overall Influence
Anita H. Clayton is the Chair of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences and the David C. Wilson Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. From 2005 to 2007, she was the President of the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health .
Go to Profile#2404
Rajini Rao
#61350
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Rajini Rao is an American physiologist who is a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Rao is also the director of the Graduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine and is the principal investigator of the Rao Lab. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Rao discovers novel ion channels and explores their roles in human health and disease. The Rao Lab identified the oncogenic role of SPCA2 in breast cancer through an aberrant method of signalling to calcium channels.
Go to Profile#2405
Qiao Jie
#58092
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Qiao Jie is a Chinese obstetrician, reproductive physician and biologist. She is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and currently president of Peking University Third Hospital. She is also director of the National Clinical Research Center on Obstetrics & Gynecology, president of China Women Doctors' Association and chair for the Reproductive Medical Society of Chinese Medical Doctor Association.
Go to Profile#2406
Barbara Hickey
#117648
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Barbara Mary Hickey is an Emeritus Professor of Oceanography at the University of Washington. Her research involves field measurements and computational models to understand coastal processes. She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
Go to Profile#2407
Susan Williams
#135903
Overall Influence
1954 - 2018 (64 years)
Susan Lynn Williams was an American marine biologist and Distinguished Professor of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis, where she directed the Bodega Marine Laboratory from 2000-2010. She researched marine coastal ecosystems and how they are affected by human activities. She was a strong advocate for environmental protection, credited with helping pass legislation expanding the boundaries of Northern California's Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank national sanctuaries, increasing the area of federally-protected coastal waters.
Go to Profile#2408
Sonja-Verena Albers
#166556
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Sonja-Verena Albers is a German microbiologist who is a professor at the University of Freiburg. Her research focuses on the cell biology of the archaea Sulfolobus acidocaldarius and Haloferax volcanii. She was elected Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology in 2023.
Go to Profile#2409
Katherine McJunkin
#143407
Overall Influence
Katherine McJunkin is an American biologist. She is the Stadtman Investigator in the Section On Regulatory RNAs, Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Go to Profile#2410
Charmane Eastman
#92658
Overall Influence
Charmane Eastman is an American academic research scientist whose career has focused on studying circadian rhythms and their relationships to sleep, jet lag, and shift work. She has also studied winter depression, more properly known as seasonal affective disorder . Of special focus are the effects of bright light and melatonin on circadian rhythms.
Go to Profile#2411
Elizabeth Sattely
#134152
Overall Influence
Elizabeth S. Sattely is an American scientist and biotechnology engineer. She is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering, an HHMI investigator, and a ChEM-H Faculty Fellow at Stanford University.
Go to Profile#2412
Judith Klein-Seetharaman
#116442
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Judith Klein-Seetharaman is an American-German biochemist who is a professor at the Arizona State University. Her research considers the structure-function properties of proteins using computational bio-linguistics. She was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to identify novel therapies to tackle HIV.
Go to Profile#2413
Gabriela Schlau-Cohen
#72141
Overall Influence
Gabriela S. Schlau-Cohen is a Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Associate Professor at MIT in the Department of Chemistry. Education and career Schlau-Cohen received a BS with honors in chemical physics from Brown University in 2003. She completed her PhD in chemistry in 2011 at the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked with Professor Graham R. Fleming as an American Association of University Women fellow. From 2011 to 2014, Schlau-Cohen was a Center for Molecular Analysis and Design postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. She worked with Professor W.E. Mo...
Go to Profile#2414
Susan Humphris
#167820
Overall Influence
Susan Humphris is a geologist known for her research on processes at mid-ocean ridges. She is an elected fellow of the American Geophysical Union. Education and career Humphris grew up in the United Kingdom, where she learned to sail and enjoyed hikes that incited her interest in the natural world. As a child, she was not fond of history classes, but enjoyed the other subjects. Humphris has an undergraduate degree from Lancaster University , and earned her Ph.D. in 1976 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Following her Ph.D., she spent time as a postdoc at Imperial College in London and a year at Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory.
Go to Profile#2415
Anne Dejean-Assémat
#76830
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Anne Dejean-Assémat is a French molecular biologist working on the mechanisms leading to the development of human cancers. Professor at the Pasteur Institute and Research Director at Inserm, she heads the laboratory of Nuclear Organization and Oncogenesis at the Pasteur Institute.
Go to Profile#2416
Amarilis de Varennes
#166892
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Amarilis Paula Alberti de Varennes e Mendonça is a Portuguese academic who is currently a professor at the University of Lisbon and president of the Instituto Superior de Agronomia. She graduated from the Technical University of Lisbon in 1979 and completed her PhD entitled "Some aspects of the host involvement in cowpea mosaic virus replication" at the University of East Anglia in 1985.
Go to Profile#2417
Ruth Kiew
#136983
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Ruth Kiew is a British botanist. Kiew was awarded the David Fairchild Medal of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, recognising her as "world’s great experts on tropical begonias" in 2002. Authority abbreviation
Go to Profile#2418
Yamini Dalal
#163288
Overall Influence
Yamini Dalal is an Indian American biochemist specialized in chromatin structure and epigenetic mechanisms. She is a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute. Education Yamini Dalal became interested in chromosome structure and epigenetic gene regulation during her Baccalaureate years at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai where she earned a B.Sc. with a double major in Biochemistry and Life Sciences in 1995. She moved to the United States for her post-graduate work. In 's laboratory at Purdue University, she used classical chromatin biochemistry tools to understand how DNA sequence motifs and linker histones can shape the chromatin structure in silico, in vitro, and in vivo.
Go to Profile#2419
J. Sook Chung
#158854
Overall Influence
Jum Sook Chung is a South Korean carcinologist who researches the impact of neuroendocrine regulation on crustacean physiology, sex differentiation, and stress responses. She is a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology.
Go to Profile#2420
Jean Youatt
#119603
Overall Influence
1925 - 2017 (92 years)
Jean Beatrice Youatt was an Australian biochemist. Early life Jean Youatt was born in China in 1925 where her parents were missionaries. Her father was Australian and her mother was British. After visiting Australia several times, she and her family moved back to Australia from 1929 to 1937. Due to travels, she attended many different schools growing up. She began to be interested in science at the age of seven or eight when someone from the Victorian museum taught her about fossils, and her parents always encouraged her in her pursuit of science education. Her education was interrupted when...
Go to Profile#2421
Mollie McGeown
#113445
Overall Influence
1923 - 2004 (81 years)
Mary Graham "Mollie" McGeown was a Northern Irish nephrologist and biochemist. She was a pioneer in dialysis and kidney transplantation, overseeing the first dialysis centre in Northern Ireland and designing the "Belfast recipe" for post-transplantation care.
Go to Profile#2422
Laurie Boyer
#166027
Overall Influence
Laurie A. Boyer is an American biologist who is a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on the regulation of cell fate decisions and how faulty regulation leads to disease using human stem cells and uses mice as models.
Go to Profile#2423
Sheila Singh
#114472
Overall Influence
Sheila K. Singh MD, PhD, FRCSC is a chief pediatric neurosurgeon at McMaster Children's Hospital in Ontario, Canada. She is also Professor of Surgery and Biochemistry, the Division Head of Neurosurgery at Hamilton Health Sciences, the Research Director for McMaster's Division of Neurosurgery, and a scientist/principal investigator appointed to the Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute at McMaster University.
Go to Profile#2424
Mindy Thompson Fullilove
#59540
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Mindy Thompson Fullilove is an American social psychiatrist who focuses on the ways social and environmental factors affect the mental health of communities. She is currently a professor of Urban Policy and Health at The New School.
Go to Profile#2425
Rita Tewari
#164117
Overall Influence
Rita Tewari is an Indian parasitologist who studies the cell and molecular biology of malaria. She currently holds a post as professor at the University of Nottingham. Early life and education Tewari was born in Delhi, India, however she moved to the North-East of the country when she was growing up. Her father was a professor in social sciences. Tewari reports having contracted malaria seven times when she was young. She initially wanted to study medicine at university but had to read zoology instead due to a lack of choice in her local area. She returned to the city of her birth for her PhD,...
Go to Profile#2426
Wendy Havran
#149954
Overall Influence
1955 - 2020 (65 years)
Wendy Havran was an American immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute. She specialized in T cells, showing that they are scarce in certain areas of the body. Life Havran was born in Houston, Texas, and would visit science museums and natural parks with her family. She attended Duke University, where she learned about immunology and received a bachelor's degree in zoology. Havran attended the University of Chicago and worked in the laboratory of Dr.Frank Fitch for her doctorate degrees. Havran completed her post-doctoral training with Dr. James P. Allison at the University of California. This is where she earned the Lucille P.
Go to Profile#2427
Margaret Hannah Fulford
#150813
Overall Influence
1904 - 1999 (95 years)
Margaret Hannah Fulford was an American bryologist who was active in identifying the flora of North and South America. Biography Fulford was born on June 14, 1904, in Cincinnati, Ohio. She subsequently attended the University of Cincinnati. She earned her BA in botany in 1926, BE in education in 1927, and returned for her MA in botany working under Emma Lucy Braun in 1928. She then attended Yale University to obtain her doctorate under Alexander William Evans, which she accomplished in 1935. Meanwhile, she worked at the University of Cincinnati as a botany instructor from 1927 to 1940. She b...
Go to Profile#2428
Samara Reck-Peterson
#168946
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Samara Reck-Peterson is an American cell biologist and biophysicist. She is a Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, San Diego and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is known for her contributions to our understanding of how dynein, an exceptionally large motor protein that moves many intracellular cargos, works and is regulated. She developed one of the first systems to produce recombinant dynein and discovered that, unlike other cytoskeletal motors, dynein can take a wide variety of step sizes, forward and back and even sideways.
Go to Profile#2429
Melly Oitzl
#115765
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Melly S. Oitzl is an Austrian behavioral neuroscientist. She is associate professor of medical pharmacology at Leiden University and adjunct professor of cognitive neurobiology at the University of Amsterdam. Oitzl is mainly interested in the relationships between stress, cognition, and emotion. She obtained her Ph.D. with the mention magna cum laude in 1989 from the University of Düsseldorf. Oitzl is a member of the board of the Earth and Life Sciences division of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, from which she had received an "Aspasia" grant in 2008. She has been a member of the executive committee and a treasurer of the European Brain and Behaviour Society.
Go to Profile#2430
Alison Cree
#71434
Overall Influence
Alison Marion Cree is a New Zealand herpetologist. She is currently a professor at Otago University. Academic career Cree graduated from the University of Waikato in 1986 with a D.Phil. for her thesis titled "Water relations of the endemic New Zealand frogs Leiopelma archeyi, L. Hamiltoni and L. Hochstetteri". Prior to this she had attained a diploma on environmental pollution in Christchurch, through the University of Canterbury.
Go to Profile#2431
Vanesa Gottifredi
#144814
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Vanesa Gottifredi is an Argentine chemist and biologist. She works as a researcher in the Principal Investigator category of the Scientific and Technological Researcher Program of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council . She is also head of the Leloir Institute's Cell Cycle and Genomic Stability Laboratory. She specializes in the mechanisms of tumor cell response to chemotherapy, work for which she was awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and L'Oreal-UNESCO.
Go to Profile#2432
Iroise Dumontheil
#168320
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Iroise Dumontheil is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of London and Director of Masters courses in Educational Neuroscience. Dumontheil was awarded the Spearman Medal from the British Psychological Society in 2015, for her research in the social cognition and executive functions associated with the rostral prefrontal cortex, particularly in adulthood and their development during adolescence.
Go to Profile#2433
Sherilynn Black
#98532
Overall Influence
Sherilynn Black is an American neuroscientist, the Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement, as well as an assistant professor of the practice of medical education at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Black's research focuses on social neuroscience and developing interventions to promote diversity in academia. Black has been widely recognized for her commitment to faculty development and advancement and holds national appointments with the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the American...
Go to Profile#2434
Isabel Behncke
#108617
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Isabel Behncke Izquierdo is a field ethologist who studies animal behaviour to understand other animals, as well as to understand humans and our place in nature. Originally from Chile, she is a primatologist, a pioneer adventurer-scientist and the first South American in following great apes in the wild. Behncke is currently director of the Centro de Estudios Públicos , and advisor to the Chilean government, working on long-term strategies in science, technology, innovation and knowledge as a member of the National Council of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation for Development , of t...
Go to Profile#2435
Ying E. Zhang
#119266
Overall Influence
Ying E. Zhang is a Chinese-American biochemist specialized in TGF-beta signaling and functions of ubiquitin E3 ligase Smurfs to better understand cancer cells and metastasis. She is a senior investigator in the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the National Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile#2436
Jessica Melbourne-Thomas
#108470
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Jessica Melbourne-Thomas is a marine, Antarctic and climate change scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia. Her research focuses on climate change, its effects on the marine environment, and how to adapt and response to these changes.
Go to Profile#2437
Barbara A. Baird
#154990
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Barbara Ann Baird is an American cell biologist and biophysicist. Baird's research investigates receptor-mediated cell signaling, including how cellular membranes are involved in targeting/regulating signaling pathways.
Go to Profile#2438
Heather Whalley
#161562
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Heather Clare Whalley is a Scottish scientist. She is a senior research fellow in Neuroimaging at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh., and is an affiliate member of the Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Her main focus of research is on the mechanisms underlying the development of major psychiatric disorders using the latest genomic and neuroimaging approaches .
Go to Profile#2439
Claudia Clopath
#104897
Overall Influence
Claudia Clopath is a Professor of Computational Neuroscience at Imperial College London and research leader at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour. She develops mathematical models to predict synaptic plasticity for both medical applications and the design of human-like machines.
Go to Profile#2440
Barbara A. Horwitz
#169106
Overall Influence
Barbara A. Horwitz is an American cellular physiologist whose work focuses on metabolism. In particular, her research has centered on the neural and hormonal regulation of energy balance. Horwitz joined the University of California, Davis first as a postdoctoral scholar and then as an Assistant Professor. Her teaching, mentorship and leadership in supporting historically marginalized communities in academia have earned her numerous campus and national awards.
Go to Profile#2441
Wang Fengping
#169477
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Wang Fengping is a Chinese marine microbiologist who studies microbes that live in deep sea and subsurface environments, with a special focus on the physiology and geochemical roles of organisms that cannot yet be cultivated in the lab. She is a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Go to Profile#2442
Danièle Guinot
#93510
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Danièle Guinot is a French biologist, an emeritus professor at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in France, known for her research on crabs. Biography Guinot was born in eastern France and educated at the University of Montpellier and the University of Paris, finishing her studies in 1955. She then joined the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle as a research assistant; she remained there for the rest of her career. She earned a doctorate from Pierre and Marie Curie University in 1977.
Go to Profile#2443
Elizabeth Borer
#168509
Overall Influence
Elizabeth T. Borer is an American ecologist and a professor of ecology, Evolution and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Early life and education Born in Pennsylvania, Borer graduated from Oberlin College in 1991, spent several years working outside academia, then returned to earn her Ph.D. in ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002 . She went on to do postdoctoral training in the Integrative Biology Department at University of California, Berkeley with Cheryl Briggs, then a second postdoc at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.
Go to Profile#2444
Eurie Hong
#147189
Overall Influence
Eurie Lee Hong is an American geneticist. She is the Vice President of Genomics at AncestryDNA. Education Hong earned a bachelor of science in biological sciences from Stanford University. She completed a Ph.D. in molecular genetics and cell biology at University of Chicago. As a graduate student in Douglas K. Bishop's laboratory, Hong worked on the biochemical characterization of the yeast meiotic Dmc1 protein.
Go to Profile#2445
Judi Allen
#169458
Overall Influence
Judith Elizabeth Allen is a British scientist who is Professor of Immunobiology at the University of Manchester. She is an expert on macrophages activated during helminthiasis and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2023. She has also done extensive work into type 2 immunity and was awarded Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh in 2016.
Go to Profile#2446
Christine Loscher
#90227
Overall Influence
Christine E. Loscher is a Professor of Biotechnology and Associate Dean for Research at Dublin City University. Loscher is director of the Health Technologies Research and Enterprise Hub, and she works on bioactive molecules for autoimmune diseases.
Go to Profile#2447
Susanna Dunachie
#167808
Overall Influence
Susanna Jane Dunachie is a British microbiologist who is Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Oxford. Her work considers microbiology and immunology to better understand bacterial infection and accelerate the development of vaccines. She has focused on melioidosis, scrub typhus and tuberculosis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she studied T cell immunity to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.
Go to Profile#2448
Valerie Todd Davies
#117280
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
Valerie Todd Davies was an arachnologist who described many species of spider. Early life Valerie Ethel Todd was born 29 September 1920 in Makirikiri, near Wanganui, in New Zealand. She attended Wanganui Girls' College and then studied her BSc at Victoria University in Wellington in 1939. She continued her studies toward a MSc at Otago University in Dunedin, graduating in 1943. Her thesis researched trap-door spiders. Upon graduation she worked as a research assistant and later an assistant lecturer in zoology at Otago University.
Go to Profile#2449
Linda M. Brzustowicz
#129349
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Linda M. Brzustowicz is a professor of genetics at Rutgers University and a member of the Motif BioSciences Scientific Advisory Board, whose main purpose is to develop technology that will benefit all laboratories using "biosamples," or samples of blood, DNA, stem cells, etc. that advance the field of human genetics. She has produced notable research in human gene functions in both the pathologic and normal states, contributing to the understanding of genetics of schizophrenia, autism, and specific language impairment . Because the diagnosed cases of childhood autism have experienced an unpre...
Go to Profile#2450
Maureen A. Donnelly
#151643
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Maureen Ann Donnelly is an American herpetologist based at Florida International University. Education and career She received her B.A. degree from California State University, Fullerton in 1977 and graduated from the University of Miami with her doctorate degree in 1987. Following her Ph.D., she held postdoctoral positions at the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Miami. She joined the faculty of Florida International University in 1994 and, as of 2022, is a professor in the biological sciences department.
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