The Most Influential People Across History

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#2451

Michelle Kelly

#127406
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Michelle Kelly , also known as Michelle Kelly-Borges, is a New Zealand scientist who specialises in sponges, their chemistry, their evolution, taxonomy, systematics, and ecology. Early life and education Born in Otago in 1961, Kelly lived in Papua New Guinea with her family from 1970 to 1980, and was educated at The Correspondence School. From 1980, she studied at the University of Auckland, and completed a Bachelor of Science degree in 1983, and a Master of Science with honours in 1987. Her masterate research, supervised by Patricia Bergquist, was an investigation of the systematics and ecology of the sponges of Motupore Island in Papua New Guinea.
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#2452

Marysia Placzek

#81590
Overall Influence
Marysia Placzek is a Wellcome Trust Investigator and Professor of Developmental Neurobiology in the Department of Biomedical Science, The University of Sheffield. In 2012, Placzek was one of ten women to receive a Suffrage Science award from the Medical Research Council London Institute of Medical Sciences.
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#2453

Virginia Minnich

Virginia Minnich
#73281
Overall Influence
1910 - 1996 (86 years)
Virginia Minnich was an American molecular biologist and hematology researcher known for discovering hemoglobin E, an abnormal form of hemoglobin that can cause blood disorders, and for working out the glutathione synthesis pathway. She was a noted blood morphologist and teacher and helped set up hematology laboratories around the world. She was the first person without a PhD or MD to be appointed a Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine.
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#2454

Christina Enroth-Cugell

#168389
Overall Influence
1919 - 2016 (97 years)
Christina Alma Elisabeth Enroth-Cugell , was a vision scientist who was a professor at Northwestern University for 31 years, was a founding faculty member and one of the first women to teach at the McCormick School of Engineering and chaired the Department of Neurobiology at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences from 1984 to 1986. Her husband David Cugell was a professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine for 58 years, the longest tenure in the school’s history.
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#2455

Ingrith Johnson Deyrup-Olsen

#111769
Overall Influence
1919 - 2004 (85 years)
Ingrith Johnson Deyrup-Olsen was an American zoologist, an expert on slugs, and a science professor interested in improving science education. Early life and education Ingrith Johnson Deyrup was born in Englewood, New Jersey. Her father was Alvin Saunders Johnson, first president of the New School for Social Research. She earned a degree in zoology from Barnard College in 1940, and a PhD in physiology from Columbia University in 1944. All six of her siblings also attended either Barnard or Columbia.
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#2456

Kate Robb

#135612
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Kate Robb is an Australian marine mammalogist who, along with colleagues, declared in 2011 a new species of the genus Tursiops, and formally named it the Burrunan dolphin, Tursiops australis. She is the Founding Director and Head of Research at the Marine Mammal Foundation in Melbourne in the Australian state of Victoria. With nearly 20 years experience researching dolphins across southern Australia, Robb achieved a Bachelor of Science with a double major in Freshwater and Marine Ecology and Zoology and a Doctor of Philosophy . She is the former President of the Australian Marine Sciences A...
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#2457

Lucy Collinson

#146566
Overall Influence
Lucy Collinson is a microbiologist, electron microscopist and scientist working at the Francis Crick Institute in London. She is the head of electron microscopy. Early career In 1998, Collinson completed a PhD in molecular microbiology at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry.
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#2458

Johanna Mappes

#169107
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Riitta Johanna Mappes is an evolutionary ecologist based in Finland. Her research focuses on interspecific interactions, such as those between predators and prey. She is known for her work on the evolution of aposematic signals and mimicry in chemically defended prey, the evolution of signal polymorphism, the evolution of bacterial virulence, and the evolution of sexual and asexual reproduction. Her main study species include the wood tiger moth , vipers , the Colorado potato beetle and the drumming wolf-spider .
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#2459

Helen Y. Chu

#137231
Overall Influence
Helen Y. Chu is an American immunologist who is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Her research considers maternal immunization, with a focus on influenza and respiratory syncytial virus. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chu was the first physician to recognise community transmission of the coronavirus disease within the United States.
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#2460

Juliet Osborne

#155192
Overall Influence
Juliet Osborne is an entomologist and ecologist in the UK. She is professor of applied ecology at the University of Exeter and she looks at the health of social insects and how they pollinate plants.
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#2461

Molly Marples

#103611
Overall Influence
1908 - 1998 (90 years)
Mary Joyce Marples was a microbial ecologist/medical mycologist who spent most of her career conducting research and teaching at the University of Otago in New Zealand from her appointment in 1946 until her retirement in 1967. She is noted as an early proponent of the theory that skin provides an ecosystem that supports a diversity of microorganisms.
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#2462

Siri Leknes

#105897
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Siri Graff Leknes is a Norwegian neuroscientist and Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oslo, where she directs the Leknes Affective Brain Lab, which is funded by a European Research Council grant.
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#2463

Kristen Kroll

#71001
Overall Influence
Kristen Kroll is an American developmental and stem cell biologist and Professor of Developmental Biology at Washington University School of Medicine. Her laboratory studies transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of brain development and its disruption to cause neurodevelopmental disorders.
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#2464

Xiaofeng Cao

#169730
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Cao Xiaofeng is a Chinese plant scientist who researches epigenetics in plants using model species in the genus Arabidopsis and rice plants. She is an elected member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences
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#2465

Kelly A. Frazer

Kelly A. Frazer
#126672
Overall Influence
Kelly A Frazer is a Professor of Pediatrics in the Medical School at the University of California, San Diego, Chief of the Division of Genome Information Sciences and Director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine.
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#2466

Gloria Choi

#143052
Overall Influence
Gloria Choi is an American neuroscientist and neuroimmunologist and the Samuel A. Goldblith Career Development Professor in the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Choi is known for elucidating the role of the immune system in the development of autism spectrum disorder-like phenotypes. Her lab currently explores how sensory experiences drive internal states and behavioural outcomes through probing the olfactory system as well as the neuroimmune system.
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#2467

Heather Cameron

#150557
Overall Influence
Heather A. Cameron is an American neuroscientist who researches adult neurogenesis and diseases involving the hippocampus. She is the chief of the neuroplasticity section at the National Institute of Mental Health.
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#2468

Rebecca Vega Thurber

#168804
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Rebecca Vega Thurber is an American microbial ecologist and coral reef scientist. She is the Pernot distinguished chair of microbiology at Oregon State University since 2020. She is a team leader of the Tara Pacific expedition and co-producer of the coral reef documentary Saving Atlantis.
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#2469

Lois Ann Pfiester

#139429
Overall Influence
1936 - 1992 (56 years)
Lois Ann Pfiester was an American phycologist and protistologist, specializing in freshwater dinoflagellate species. Biography Pfiester received in 1965 her A.B. from Spalding University, in 1970 her M.A. from Murray State University, and in 1974 her Ph.D. in botany from Ohio State University. She joined in 1974 the faculty of the botany department of the University of Oklahoma as an assistant professor and was a full professor there in 1992 at the time of her death. She directed 4 doctoral dissertations and was the author or coauthor of over 75 journal articles.
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#2470

Maria Jesús Uriz Lespe

#169356
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
María Jesús Uriz Lespe is a pioneer in taxonomy, biology and population genetics of marine sponges, with a wide international recognition. In recent years she has focused her research on evolutionary and functional aspects of the symbiotic relationships between sponges and microorganisms, interacting with the renowned American specialist Lynn Margulis. Her line of research in the biological activities of sponge secondary metabolites gave rise to a continued collaboration with pharmaceutical companies that have allowed the development of antitumor drugs.
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#2471

Agness Gidna

#55875
Overall Influence
Agness Gidna is a Tanzanian paleontologist and a former Senior Curator of Paleontology at the National Museum of Tanzania. She is currently working with Ngorongoro Conservation Area as a Principal Cultural Heritage Officer. She is the first Tanzanian woman to hold a doctorate in Physical Anthropology and she is the first Tanzanian female research director at Olduvai Gorge, where she has been a co-principal investigator of the Olduvai Palaeoanthropology and Paleoecology Project since 2017.
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#2472

C. V. Savitri Gunatilleke

#150373
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Malwattage Celestine Violet Savitri Gunatilleke is professor emeritus at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka's Central Province. She has had a long career in forest ecology and has been a leader in quantitative ecology and education. Most of her research has focused in the Sinharaja rain forest in Sri Lanka. She considers her main contribution to forest ecology to be spreading the idea that successful forest conservation depends on local conservationists. In line with this, she is proud of her students and their accomplishments in the field of conservation.
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#2473

Aino Henssen

#135120
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Aino Marjatta Henssen , was a German lichenologist and systematist. Her father, Gottfried Henssen, was a folklorist and her mother was Finnish. Education and career Henssen began her studies in biology in Freiburg, Germany, before continuing in Marburg. She obtained her doctorate in 1953, which focused on the physiology of the aquatic plant Spirodela polyrhiza. In 1963, she became the curator of the Botanisches Institut at Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany. Following her habilitation in 1965, she was appointed in 1970 to the position of associate professor for thallophyte studies. She r...
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#2474

Linda Restifo

#156332
Overall Influence
Linda L. Restifo graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with an M.D. in 1984 and a Ph.D. in genetics in 1986. She is currently a professor at the University of Arizona of neuroscience, neurology, and cell biology, and she is a member of the BIO5 Institute. With her team, she works to understand normal brain development and the changes in that brain development that leads to cognitive disorders. She is known for her research into the brains of insects, particularly flies.
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#2475

Kirsten Parris

#111514
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Kirsten M. Parris is an Australian urban ecologist, Professor of Urban Ecology in the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences at the University of Melbourne and an Honorary Associate of the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. She also leads the National Environmental Science Program's Research Hub for Clean Air and Urban Landscapes .
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#2476

Dragana Rogulja

#147201
Overall Influence
Dragana Rogulja is a Serbian neuroscientist and circadian biologist who is an assistant professor in Neurobiology within the Harvard Medical School Blavatnik Institute of Neurobiology. Rogulja explores the molecular mechanisms governing sleep in Drosophila as well as probing how circadian mechanisms integrate sensory information to drive behavior. Rogulja uses mating behavior in Drosophila to explore the neural circuits linking internal states to motivated behaviors.
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#2477

Heather Williams

#59324
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Heather Williams is an American ornithologist, and professor at Williams College since 1988. She graduated from Bowdoin College with an A.B. in biology in 1977, from Rockefeller University with a Ph.D. in neuroscience in 1985, and was postdoctoral fellow, Field Research Center. She was a 1993 MacArthur Fellow. Williams' most notable work highlights bird song data gathered on Kent Island, also known as the "Bowdoin Science Station".
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#2478

Lisa Staiano-Coico

Lisa Staiano-Coico
#62799
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Lisa Staiano-Coico or Lisa S. Coico is an American politician and academic. Coico was the twelfth president of City College of New York, from August 2010 until October 2016. A graduate of Brooklyn College 1976, Coico became the first City University of New York alumna appointed to head the City College of New York. Coico resigned on October 7, 2016, amidst federal and state investigations into her finances.
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#2479

Marisela Morales

#170064
Overall Influence
Marisela Morales is a Mexican neuroscientist specializing in the neurobiology of drug addiction. She is a senior investigator at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Education Morales completed a B.S. in biochemistry and microbiology at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional. She earned a M.S. and Ph.D. in biochemistry and cell biology at Universidad de Guanajuato Institute of Experimental Biology. Morales was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder under Eva Fifková and Scripps Research under Floyd E. Bloom.
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#2480

Charlotte Stagg

#132242
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Charlotte Stagg is a British neurophysiologist who is a professor at the University of Oxford. She leads the Physiological Neuroimaging Group. Early life and education Stagg studied physiology and medicine at the University of Bristol, graduating with pre-clinical and clinical honours and the Physiological Society prize. For her doctoral degree, she moved to the University of Oxford and worked at the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain under the supervision of Paul Matthews and Heidi Johansen-Berg. During her DPhil, she looked to understand how people acquire new motor skills.
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#2481

H. Efsun Arda

#100398
Overall Influence
Hatice Efsun Arda is a Turkish developmental and systems biologist researching cell lineages that give rise to human pancreas using single cell sequencing. She is a Stadtman principal investigator and head of the developmental genomics group at the National Cancer Institute.
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#2482

Lisa-ann Gershwin

#77028
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Lisa-ann Gershwin, also known as Lisa Gershwin, is a biologist based in Launceston, Tasmania, who has described over 200 species of jellyfish, and written and co-authored several non-fiction books about Cnidaria including Stung! and Jellyfish – A Natural History . She provides independent advice related to jellyfish worldwide to the media, online and via The Jellyfish App. She was a candidate in the 2021 Tasmanian state election running as an independent in the electorate of Clark.
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#2483

Helen Cooke

#108433
Overall Influence
Helen J. Cooke was an American gastroenterologist who was a professor at Ohio State University. She studied intestinal mucosa and pioneered the field of neurobiology. Throughout her career, Cooke campaigned to support women and early career researchers.
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#2484

Maureen Murphy

#170009
Overall Influence
Maureen E. Murphy is an American cancer researcher who works at The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. Her research focuses on the tumor suppressor genes p53 and the cancer survivor protein HSP70. Previously, she was a faculty member at the Fox Chase Cancer Center from 1998 until moving to The Wistar Institute in 2011.
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#2485

Evdokia Anagnostou

#127706
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Evdokia Anagnostou is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto, and is cross-appointed as pediatric neurologist and a senior clinician scientist at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto, Canada. She is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Translational Therapeutics in Autism Spectrum Disorder.
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#2486

Usha Varanasi

#139426
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Usha Varanasi is an Indian-American marine scientist who in 1994 became the first woman to lead one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's major field laboratories for fisheries, until her retirement in 2010. she focuses on questions about how exposure to nature can improve people's health. She is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Washington State Academy of Sciences.
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#2487

Catherine King

Catherine King
#81707
Overall Influence
Catherine K. King is an Australian ecotoxicologist who studies sub-Antarctic and Antarctic regions, with a focus on climate change and the impacts of contaminants and environmental stressors in terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
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#2488

Emma J. Rosi

#164055
Overall Influence
Emma J. Rosi is an ecosystem ecologist and Senior Scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook NY, where she serves as the director of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study. Early life and education Emma Rosi grew up near Lake Michigan and spent a great deal of time outdoors as a child. From a very young age she was interested in pursuing a career in biology with a focus on insects. Eventually her graduate studies at the University of Georgia steered her toward research on rivers and streams. In 1993, Rosi attended the Field School at the Rocky Mountain Biological Station, and in 1994 she took part in a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates.
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#2489

Anne George

#121379
Overall Influence
Dr. Anne George is a Professor of Oral Biology at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry and holds the Allan G. Brodie Endowed Professorship, and she also is an adjunct professor in the Department of Cell and Anatomy and the Department of Engineering at the University of Illinois Medical School. She has been a faculty member at Northwestern University in Chicago, where she was given a Teaching Excellence Award in 1999.
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#2490

Dorothea Sandars

#113714
Overall Influence
1919 - 2002 (83 years)
Dorothea Sandars was an Australian academic and parasitologist who specialised in fish parasites. Early life Dorothea Fanny Sandars was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1919. She attended Perth Modern School. Sandars graduated with a BSc with Honours in 1943, earning a Hackett scholarship. She investigated gill parasites of fish in West Australian waters. She continued her studies graduating with her MSc from the University of Western Australia in 1944 and earned a Hackett research studentship.
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#2491

Jill F. Johnstone

#163528
Overall Influence
Jill Johnstone was a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Saskatchewan, where she started the Northern Plant Ecology Lab which she still runs. She primarily conducts research on plant ecology and environmental biology with an emphasis on how boreal forest and tundra are responding to rapid rates of climate change.
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#2492

Janet E. Hall

#168333
Overall Influence
Janet Elizabeth Hall is a Canadian-American physician-scientist and neuroendocrinologist specialized in the human reproductive physiology and pathophysiology. Her research focuses on women's health and the neuroendocrine interactions governing normal reproduction and the impact of aging. She is the clinical director at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Hall was previously a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School.
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#2493

Clair Francomano

#158837
Overall Influence
Clair A. Francomano is an American medical geneticist and academic specializing in Ehlers–Danlos syndromes. She is Professor of Medical and Molecular Genetics at Indiana University. Early life, education and training Clair Ann Francomano was born to Mrs. and Charles J. Francomano, a general practitioner. She attended Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, New York and participated in programs at the National Institutes of Health and the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine as a high school student. She earned her undergraduate degree from Yale College in 1976, having returned as an undergraduate to the Jackson Laboratory to study cancer genetics on a National Science Foundation grant in 1973.
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#2494

Patricia Kern Holmgren

Patricia Kern Holmgren
#169759
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Patricia Holmgren is an American botanist. Holmgren's main botanical interests are the flora of the U.S. intermountain west and the genera Tiarella and Thlaspi. Holmgren was the director of the herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden from 1981–2000, and editor of Index Herbariorum from 1974–2008.
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#2495

Mackenzie Weygandt Mathis

#123593
Overall Influence
Mackenzie W. Mathis, is an American neuroscientist and principal investigator at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Her lab investigates adaptive mechanisms in biological and artificial intelligence to inform adaptive AI systems and translational research.
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#2496

Susan Lovett

#158391
Overall Influence
Susan Thomas Lovett is an American molecular biologist who is the Abraham S. and Gertrude Burg Professor of Microbiology at Brandeis University. She is interested in the mechanisms that allow the genetic material in cells to remain stable over time.
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#2497

Dena G. Hernandez

#78915
Overall Influence
Dena Michelle Godwin Hernandez is a neurogeneticist. She is head of the genomic technologies group in the laboratory of neurogenetics at the National Institute on Aging. Hernandez completed a Ph.D. at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology in 2016. Her dissertation was titled Genetic variation and DNA methylation in the context of neurological disease. Hernandez's doctoral advisors were Andrew Singleton and John Hardy.
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#2498

Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello

#152151
Overall Influence
Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello is a Venezuelan-American microbial ecologist that has worked on adaptations of gut fermentation organs in animals, gastric colonization by bacteria, assembly of the microbiota in early life, effect of practices that reduce microbiota transmission and colonization in humans, and effect of urbanization. She is the Henry Rutgers Professor of Microbiome and Health at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her lab at collaborates in multidisciplinary science, integrating microbiology, immunology, pediatrics, nutrition, anthropology, environmental engineering and architectu...
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#2499

Julie Law

#152862
Overall Influence
Julie Law is an American molecular and cellular biologist. Law's pioneering work on DNA methylation patterns led to the discovery of the role of the CLASSY protein family in DNA methylation. Law is currently an associate professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
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#2500

Margaret Crofoot

#153366
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Margaret Chatham Crofoot is an American anthropologist who is a professor at the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. Her research considers the behavior and decision making of primates. She was appointed an Alexander von Humboldt Professor in 2019.
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