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,
#251
Kate Jones
#39298
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Katherine Elizabeth Jones is a British biodiversity scientist, with a special interest in bats. She is Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity, and Director of the Biodiversity Modelling Research Group, at University College London. She is a past chair of the Bat Conservation Trust.
Go to Profile#252
Alice Alldredge
#31780
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Alice Alldredge is an American oceanographer and marine biologist who studies marine snow, carbon cycling, microbes and plankton in the ecology of the ocean. She has conducted research in the open sea, at her laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara as well as in collaboration with the Long Term Ecological Research Network at the Mo'orea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research Site in Mo'orea, French Polynesia. According to the annual ISI Web of Knowledge list published by Thomson Reuters, she has been one of the most cited scientific researchers since 2003.
Go to Profile#253
Elaine Tuomanen
#49149
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Elaine I. Tuomanen is an American pediatrician and chair of the Department of Infectious Diseases at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. She is noted for her research on Molecular pathogenesis of Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Go to Profile#254
Marion Koopmans
#36356
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Maria Petronella Gerarda Koopmans is a Dutch virologist who is Head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience. Her research considers emerging infectious diseases, noroviruses and veterinary medicine. In 2018 she was awarded the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research Stevin Prize. She serves on the scientific advisory group of the World Health Organization.
Go to Profile#255
Cathie Martin
#52229
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Catherine Rosemary Martin is a Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of East Anglia and project leader at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, co-ordinating research into the relationship between diet and health and how crops can be fortified to improve diets and address escalating chronic disease globally.
Go to Profile#256
Silvia Arber
#49056
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Silvia Arber is a Swiss neurobiologist. She teaches and researches at both the Biozentrum of the University of Basel and the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel Switzerland.
Go to Profile#257
Maria Ragland Davis
#41666
Overall Influence
1959 - 2010 (51 years)
Maria Ragland Davis was an American biologist and educator. She was associate professor of Biology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville where she studied molecular biology and plant genetics. Life and career A native of Detroit, she received her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in the same discipline from North Carolina State University. Following the receipt of her master's degree, Davis completed her doctorate in biochemistry and plant biology. Davis studied strawberries, looking at the genetic makeup of strains that we...
Go to Profile#258
Kay Redfield Jamison
#3815
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Kay Redfield Jamison is an American clinical psychologist and writer. Her work has centered on bipolar disorder, which she has had since her early adulthood. She holds the post of the Dalio Professor in Mood Disorders and Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is an Honorary Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.
Go to Profile#259
María Soengas
#44199
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
María S. Soengas is a Spanish immunologist who is a senior scientist at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center . Her research considers melanoma and the development of new therapeutic strategies. She was elected to the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2022.
Go to Profile#260
Beth Shapiro
#27296
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Beth Alison Shapiro is an American evolutionary molecular biologist. She is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Shapiro's work has centered on the analysis of ancient DNA. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2009 and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2006.
Go to Profile#261
Suzanne Simard
#33590
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Suzanne Simard is a Canadian scientist who is a professor in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia. After growing up in the Monashee Mountains, British Columbia, she received her PhD in Forest Sciences at Oregon State University. Prior to teaching at the University of British Columbia, Simard worked as a research scientist at the British Columbia Ministry of Forests.
Go to Profile#262
Alison Jolly
#24757
Overall Influence
1937 - 2014 (77 years)
Alison Jolly was a primatologist, known for her studies of lemur biology. She wrote several books for both popular and scientific audiences and conducted extensive fieldwork on Lemurs in Madagascar, primarily at the Berenty Reserve, a small private reserve of gallery forest set in the semi-arid spiny desert area in the far south of Madagascar.
Go to Profile#263
Noriko Osumi
#25819
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Noriko Osumi is a Japanese neuroscientist. She was appointed as the Vice-president of Tohoku University in 2018, a Professor of Developmental Neuroscience, and the Director of the Core Center for Neuroscience at that university. Osumi also presided at the Molecular Biology Society of Japan, 2013-2014.
Go to Profile#264
Anita Roberts
#39843
Overall Influence
1942 - 2006 (64 years)
Anita Bauer Roberts was an American molecular biologist who made pioneering observations of a protein, TGF-β, that is critical in healing wounds and bone fractures and that has a dual role in blocking or stimulating cancers.
Go to Profile#265
Barbara Pearse
#48480
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Barbara Mary Frances Pearse FRS is a British biological scientist. She works at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Education Barbara Pearse attended the independent Lady Eleanor Holles School in Hampton in Greater London, and gained her undergraduate degree from University College London in 1969.
Go to Profile#266
Trudy Mackay
#24802
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Trudy Frances Charlene Mackay is the director of Clemson University's Center for Human Genetics located on the campus of the Greenwood Genetic Center. She is recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on the genetics of complex traits. Mackay is also the Self Family Chair in Human Genetics and Professor of Genetics and Biochemistry at Clemson University.
Go to Profile#267
Lynn Kimsey
#37631
Overall Influence
Lynn Kimsey is an entomologist, taxonomist, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis since 1989. Her specialties are bees and wasps; and insect diversity and evolution.
Go to Profile#268
Susan R. Wessler
#49724
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Susan Randi Wessler , ForMemRS, is an American plant molecular biologist and geneticist. She is Distinguished Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Riverside . Education Wessler graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1970. She received her bachelor's degree in 1974 in Biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornell University in 1980.
Go to Profile#269
Susan Rae Wente
#40403
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Susan Wente is an American cell biologist and academic administrator currently serving as the 14th and current President of Wake Forest University. From 2014 to 2021 she was Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Vanderbilt University. Between August 15, 2019 and June 30, 2020, she served as interim Chancellor at Vanderbilt.
Go to Profile#270
Nicole King
#41798
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Nicole King is an American biologist and faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley in molecular and cell biology and integrative biology. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. She has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2013.
Go to Profile#271
Elisabet Sahtouris
#17009
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Elisabet Sahtouris is an evolution biologist, futurist, speaker, author and sustainability consultant to businesses, government agencies and other organizations. She is a US and Greek citizen who has lived in the US, Canada, Greece, Peru and Spain while lecturing, doing workshops and media appearances on all continents. She has a PhD from Dalhousie University in Canada. She consults with corporations and government organizations in Australia, Brazil, Europe, Asia, Africa and the United States.
Go to Profile#272
Barbara Iglewski
#45795
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Barbara Hotham Iglewski is an American microbiologist. She is director of international programs at the University of Rochester Medical Center where she is a professor of microbiology and immunology.
Go to Profile#273
Daniela Stock
#40605
Overall Influence
Daniela Stock is an Australian scientist at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute with a conjoint position at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. She is a structural biologist whose research has provided insight into the molecular picture of rotary ATPases.
Go to Profile#274
Sandra Knapp
#46716
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Sandra Diane Knapp is an American-born botanist. She is a merit researcher of the Plants Division of the Natural History Museum, London and from 2018 was the president of the Linnean Society of London. While working at the Natural History Museum, London she has overseen the Flora Mesoamericana inventory of Central American plants. She has published several books on botanical subjects as well as a significant number of scientific articles. In 2016 she was awarded the Linnean Medal. In 2022 she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2023 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of t...
Go to Profile#275
Patricia Louise Dudley
#47500
Overall Influence
1929 - 2004 (75 years)
Patricia Louise Dudley was an American zoologist specializing in research of copepods. An early pioneer using an electron microscope to study copepod organs and tissues, she taught at Barnard College for 35 years and served as Chair of the Biological Sciences department. Dudley was a National Science Foundation faculty fellow. She donated funds to establish the Patricia L. Dudley Endowment at Friday Harbor Labs, where she conducted research.
Go to Profile#276
F. Gwendolen Rees
#32389
Overall Influence
1906 - 1994 (88 years)
Florence Gwendolen Rees, FRS was a Welsh zoologist and parasitologist. She was the first Welsh woman to become a fellow of the Royal Society. By the time she was 80 years old, she had published 68 papers.
Go to Profile#277
Eva Zažímalová
#60181
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Eva Zažímalová is a Czech biochemist and since March 2017 the president of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Since 2021, she has also been one of the European Commission's Chief Scientific Advisors.
Go to Profile#278
Regine Kahmann
#33712
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Regine Kahmann is a German microbiologist and was Director at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg from 2000 to 2019. She was made a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2020.
Go to Profile#279
Pamela S. Soltis
#57506
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Pamela Soltis is an American botanist. She is a distinguished professor at the University of Florida, curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History, principal investigator of the Laboratory of Molecular Systematics and Evolutionary Genetics at the Florida Museum of Natural History, and founding director of the University of Florida Biodiversity Institute.
Go to Profile#280
Judith Campisi
#47015
Overall Influence
Judith Campisi is an American biochemist and cell biologist. She is a professor of biogerontology at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. She is also a member of the SENS Research Foundation Advisory Board and an adviser at the Lifeboat Foundation. She is co-editor in chief of the Aging Journal, together with Mikhail Blagosklonny and David Sinclair, and founder of the pharmaceutical company Unity Biotechnology. She is listed in Who's Who in Gerontology. She is widely known for her research on how senescent cells influence aging and cancer — in particular the Senescence Associated Secreto...
Go to Profile#281
Laura Ayres
#26242
Overall Influence
1922 - 1992 (70 years)
Laura Ayres was a virologist who was one of Portugal's pioneers in the fight against AIDS. Early training Laura Guilhermina Martins Ayres was born on 1 June 1922 in Loulé in the Faro District of Portugal. She graduated in Medicine in 1946. It was during her subsequent internships in hospitals that she became interested in the study of communicable diseases. After her hospital training, she did an internship between 1950 and 1953 in Lisbon at the Instituto Superior de Higiene , the former designation of the Instituto Nacional de Saúde Dr. Ricardo Jorge . There she carried out studies on the in...
Go to Profile#282
Gisela Kaplan
#33765
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Gisela Kaplan is an Australian ethologist who primarily specialises in ornithology and primatology. She is a professor emeritus in animal behaviour at the University of New England, Australia, and also honorary professor of the Queensland Brain Institute.
Go to Profile#283
Meemann Chang
#31068
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Meemann Chang also known as Zhang Miman, is a Chinese paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology . She completed her undergraduate studies at Moscow University and completed her PhD thesis entitled 'The braincase of Youngolepis, a Lower Devonian crossopterygian from Yunnan, south-western China' at Stockholm University. She was the first woman to become head of IVPP in 1983. For her many career achievements, she received an honorary degree from the University of Chicago in 2011 and the Romer-Simpson Medal from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2016...
Go to Profile#284
Karen Avraham
#25766
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Karen B. Avraham is an Israeli-American human geneticist and the first female Dean of the Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Medicine. Born in Canada in 1962, Avraham moved to the US at a young age. Her research focuses on the discovery and characterization of genes responsible for hereditary hearing loss.
Go to Profile#285
Sharon R. Long
#22882
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Sharon Rugel Long is an American plant biologist. She is the Steere-Pfizer Professor of Biological Science in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, and the Principal Investigator of the Long Laboratory at Stanford.
Go to Profile#286
Ana Maria Cuervo
#47765
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Ana Maria Cuervo is a Spanish-American physician, researcher, and cell biologist. She is a professor in developmental and molecular miology, anatomy and structural biology, and medicine and co-director of the Institute for Aging Studies at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is best known for her research work on autophagy, the process by which cells recycle waste products, and its changes in aging and age-related diseases.
Go to Profile#287
Judith Kimble
#54844
Overall Influence
Judith Kimble is a Henry Vilas Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Medical Genetics and Cell and Regenerative Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute . Kimble’s research focuses on the molecular regulation of animal development.
Go to Profile#288
Jacqueline McGlade
#29259
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Jacqueline Myriam McGlade is a British-born Canadian marine biologist and environmental informatics professor. Her research concerns the spatial and nonlinear dynamics of ecosystems, climate change and scenario development. She is currently professor of resilience and sustainable development at the University College London Institute for Global Prosperity and Faculty of Engineering, UK, and professor at Strathmore University in the Institute for Public Policy and Governance, Kenya.
Go to Profile#289
Alison Woollard
#47823
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Alison Woollard is a British biologist. She is a lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford where she is also a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. Early life Woollard was born in 1968 in Kingston-upon-Thames.
Go to Profile#290
Colleen Cavanaugh
#57160
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Colleen Marie Cavanaugh is an American academic microbiologist best known for her studies of hydrothermal vent ecosystems. As of 2002, she is the Edward C. Jeffrey Professor of Biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and is affiliated with the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Cavanaugh was the first to propose that the deep-sea giant tube worm, Riftia pachyptila, obtains its food from bacteria living within its cells, an insight which she had as a graduate student at Harvard. Significantly, she made the co...
Go to Profile#291
Pamela J. Bjorkman
#42310
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Pamela Jane Bjorkman NAS, AAAS is an American biochemist. She is the David Baltimore Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology , Her research centers on the study of the three-dimensional structures of proteins related to Class I MHC, or Major Histocompatibility Complex, proteins of the immune system and proteins involved in the immune responses to viruses . Bjorkman is most well known as a pioneer in the field of structural biology.
Go to Profile#292
Cecilia Lo
#37311
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Cecilia Wen-ya Lo is a professor and the F. Sargent Cheever Chair of Developmental Biology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on the study of congenital heart defects. Education Lo received her bachelor's degree in biology in 1974 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked with David Baltimore. She received her Ph.D. in 1979 from Rockefeller University.
Go to Profile#293
Gagandeep Kang
#15534
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Gagandeep Kang FRS is an Indian microbiologist and virologist who is the Professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Sciences at the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India and from August 2016 to July 2020 was executive director of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. Her major research focus is on viral infections in children, and the testing of rotaviral vaccines. She also works on other enteric infections and their consequences when children are infected in early life, sanitation and water safety.
Go to Profile#294
Barbara Sahakian
#26557
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, is professor of clinical neuropsychology at the department of psychiatry and Medical Research Council /Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge. She is also an honorary clinical psychologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. She has an international reputation in the fields of cognitive psychopharmacology, neuroethics, neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry and neuroimaging.
Go to Profile#295
Lynne E. Maquat
#45215
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Lynne Elizabeth Maquat is an American biochemist and molecular biologist whose research focuses on the cellular mechanisms of human disease. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. She currently holds the J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair and is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics, pediatrics and of oncology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Professor Maquat is also Founding Director of the Center for RNA Biology and Founding Chair of Graduate Women in Science at the Universi...
Go to Profile#296
Asifa Akhtar
#26538
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Asifa Akhtar is a Pakistani biologist who has made significant contributions to the field of chromosome regulation. She is Senior Group Leader and Director of the Department of Chromatin Regulation at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics. Akhtar was awarded EMBO membership in 2013. She became the first international and female Vice President of the Max Planck Society's Biology and Medicine Section in July 2020.
Go to Profile#297
Alanna Schepartz
#28039
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Alanna Schepartz is an American professor and scientist. She is currently the T.Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Chair in Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly the Sterling Professor of Chemistry at Yale University.
Go to Profile#298
Heidi Sosik
#41038
Overall Influence
Heidi Sosik is an American biologist, oceanographer, and inventor based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Career She is a senior scientist in the Stanley W. Watson Chair for Excellence in Oceanography; Director of WHOI's Center for Ocean, Marine, and Seafloor Observing Systems; Chief Scientist of the Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory ; and lead scientist for the Northeast United States Shelf Long Term Ecological Research program. She is the co-creator of the Imaging FlowCytobot, an automated underwater microscope that has been used to study microscopic ocean life over time and to prevent shellfish poisoning.
Go to Profile#299
Pamela Silver
#34298
Overall Influence
Pamela Ann Silver is an American cell and systems biologist and a bioengineer. She holds the Elliot T. and Onie H. Adams Professorship of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Systems Biology. Silver is one of the founding Core Faculty Members of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#300
Eva-Mari Aro
#39516
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Eva-Mari Aro is a Finnish biologist and professor of plant molecular biology at the University of Turku, Finland. Her research has focused on the function, regulation, damage, repair, and evolution of the machinery of photosynthesis, with applications in renewable energy. She was elected to the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 2001 and was elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.
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