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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#2551

Heather J. Lynch

#131782

Overall Influence

Heather J. Lynch is an associate professor of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University and the first Endowed Chair for Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook's Institute for Advanced Computational Science. She is a 2019 laureate of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists and a National Geographic Explorer. Lynch uses satellite remote sensing, field work and mathematical models to better understand the population dynamics of the penguins of the Antarctic Peninsula.

#2552

Dora Emilia Mora de Retana

Dora Emilia Mora de Retana

#81431

Overall Influence

1939 - 2001 (62 years)

Dora Emilia Mora de Retana was a noted Costa Rican botanist, known primarily for her work with orchids. She compiled an extensive catalogue of the variations of the flower found in Costa Rica which became the seminal reference work on the family Orchidaceae in the country for over a decade. There are at least five species of orchids named in her honor and in 2011, a plaque bearing her name was installed at the Lankester Botanical Garden to recognize her contributions to its development.

#2553

Carol A. Johnston

#155622

Overall Influence

Carol Arlene Johnston is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Natural Resource Management at South Dakota State University. Johnston is known for her research on beaver ecology and wetlands. Education Johnston earned a Bachelor of Science in Natural Resources from Cornell University. She then went on to earn a Master of Science in Land Resources and Soil Science, both degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Johnston also received her PhD in Soil Science from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

#2554

Christine Ann Denny

#119796

Overall Influence

Christine Denny is an American neuroscientist and associate professor of Clinical Neurobiology in Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. Denny investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying learning and memory. She developed a novel technique to label neurons that encode specific memories. She used this technique to probe what happens to hippocampal memory traces in different disease states.

#2555

Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald

#91402

Overall Influence

Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald is an Austrian researcher specializing in ecosystem ecology. She is a Full Research Professor in Ecology and Global Environmental Change as well as the Department Head of Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

#2556

Cassandra Extavour

Cassandra Extavour

#150769

Overall Influence

Cassandra Extavour is a Canadian geneticist, researcher of organismic and evolutionary biology, professor of molecular and cell biology at Harvard University, and a classical singer. Her research has focused on evolutionary and developmental genetics. She is known for demonstrating that germ cells engage in cell to cell competition before becoming a gamete, which indicates that natural selection can affect and change genetic material before adult sex reproduction takes place. She was also the Director of EDEN , a National Science Foundation-funded research collaborative that encouraged scienti...

#2557

Nucharin Songsasen

#170023

Overall Influence

Nucharin Songsasen is a research biologist and head of the Center for Species Survival at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. Songsasen is an expert in global canid conservation, including maned wolves, African wild dogs, and dholes.

#2558

Samira Mubareka

#133980

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Samira Mubareka is a Canadian microbiologist who is a clinical scientist at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Ontario. Her research considers the influenza virus, viral transmission and aerobiology. During the COVID-19 pandemic Mubareka isolated the genome of Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in an effort to improve detection and diagnostics. She served as a member of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.

#2559

Lindy McBride

#169112

Overall Influence

Carolyn McBride is an assistant professor who holds a joint position with the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. She works on understanding the genetic and neural basis for behavioral evolution through the study of mosquitoes. She has received several early investor awards for her work on genetics, most notably the Rosalind Franklin Young Investor Award in 2016, the Pew Scholars Award in 2015, and the Searle Scholars award in 2016.

#2560

Tatyana Dmitrieva

#62702

Overall Influence

1951 - 2010 (59 years)

Tatyana Borisovna Dmitrieva was a Russian psychiatrist, a member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and Health minister. During the period of 1998-2010, she headed the Serbsky Center. She is the Director of the Serbsky State Research Centre for Social and Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow, which is responsible for forensic psychiatry for criminal courts. She is also the Head of the Department for Social and Forensic Psychiatry at the Sechenov Medical Academy of Moscow and Vice-Chairperson of the Russian Society of Psychiatrists and Narcologists.

#2561

Ana Cristina Rego

#168768

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Ana Cristina Rego is a Portuguese neurologist. She is a professor at the University of Coimbra in Portugal and is head of the research group on Mitochondria and Neurodegenerative disorders, researching on topics such as Alzheimer’s disease, Huntingdon's disease, and Parkinson’s disease. She is presently president of the Portuguese Society of Neuroscience.

#2562

Shoba Ranganathan

#171953

Overall Influence

Shoba Ranganathan is an Indian Australian biochemist who is a professor of bioinformatics at Macquarie University. Her research considers computational biology and bioinformatics, genome annotation and structural bioinformatics.

#2563

Myriam Gorospe

#108416

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Myriam Gorospe is a Spanish scientist, the head of the RNA Regulation Section at the National Institute on Aging since 1998. Her group studies the influence of RNA in cellular processes related to aging.

#2564

Wei-Shau Hu

#94858

Overall Influence

Wei-Shau Hu is an American geneticist specialized in HIV research, retroviral recombination, RNA packaging, and virus assembly. She is a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute and head of the viral recombination section. She was an associate professor at West Virginia University.

#2565

Alice Lazzarini

Alice Lazzarini

#94872

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Alice M. Lazzarini is a scientist, author and researcher on neurogenetic disorders, including Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease. She is an assistant professor of Neurology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School , where her work helped establish the genetic basis of Parkinson's. Later in life, she was diagnosed with Parkinson's—the very disease she had spent decades researching.

#2566

Éva Kondorosi

#151294

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Éva Kondorosi is a Hungarian biochemist who is known for her work on Rhizobium-legume symbiosis. She has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2010. In 2015 she became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and in 2020 she was appointed as a Chief Scientific Advisor to the European Commission.

#2567

Kate Storey

#123594

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Kate Gillian Storey is a developmental biologist and head of Division of Cell & Developmental Biology at University of Dundee. Research and career Storey is a developmental biologist who investigates cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate neural development. Her early work uncovered a fundamental cell signalling switch that controls when and where neural differentiation begins in the embryo...

#2568

Martha Elizabeth Newton

#78655

Overall Influence

1941 - 2020 (79 years)

Martha Elizabeth Newton was a British bryologist and botanist, specialising in cytology and field surveying. Early life and education Newton was born in 1941 at her family's Lumm Farm, Littlemoss, Limehurst in Lancashire. She had one sister. She attended Littlemoss School and then Hyde County Grammar School for a year before transferring to the new Astley County Grammar School. She became interested in natural history as a child and her interest was encouraged by her parents. Newton attended University of Manchester and graduated in 1964 with a BSc, having specialised in botany and zoology. S...

#2569

Lauren Bakaletz

#171238

Overall Influence

Lauren Opremcak Bakaletz is a Professor of both Pediatrics and Otolaryngology at Ohio State University as well as the director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

#2570

Kim Green

#171065

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Kim Yarbrough Green is an American virologist. She is chief of the caliciviruses section in the laboratory of infectious diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. She researches noroviruses in human disease, disease prevention, and control strategies.

#2571

Odette Harris

#61755

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Odette Harris is a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University and the Director of the Brain Injury Program for the Stanford University School of Medicine. She is the Deputy Chief of Staff, Rehabilitation at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System.

#2572

Amanda Fosang

#79444

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Amanda Jane Fosang is a biomedical researcher who has pioneered arthritis research in Australia. Career Fosang is a principal research fellow with the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia who has an established career researching arthritis and cartilage biology in health and disease. She is professor and group leader of arthritis research at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and the University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics. Fosang returned to Australia after completing her post-doctoral studies at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology in London, and was awarded an RD Wright Fellowship by the NHMRC in 1994.

#2573

Marina Joubert

#38481

Overall Influence

Marina Joubert is a senior science communication researcher at The Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology at Stellenbosch University. Previously, she was the communication manager for the National Research Foundation and managed her own independent science communication consultancy for a decade. Her consultancy presented the first online course in science communication in Africa.

#2574

Sue Jones

#75110

Overall Influence

Susan Jones is a British computational biologist and bioinformatics group leader at the James Hutton Institute. Her work is specially focused on plant pathogen diagnostics, particularly virus diagnostics, using large datasets of RNA-Seq data. She also works on functional genomics, transcription regulation, protein-protein and protein-nucleic-acid interactions.,

#2575

Elizabeth Jonas

#74992

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Ann Jonas is an American physician and neuroscientist at the Yale School of Medicine where she is Professor of endocrinology and neuroscience. Her seminal work includes the first in vivo electrical recordings of mitochrondrial membrane potentials and influential research on metabolic pathways of neuronal death.

#2576

Elizabeth A. Widjaja

#134872

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Dr. Elizabeth Anita Widjaja is a Senior Principal Researcher of bamboo taxonomy at the Herbarium Bogoriense, Botany Division, Biological Research Centre at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences in Bogor, Indonesia. She is especially interested in Indonesian bamboo and Malesian bamboo generally, and promotes the cultivation of bamboo for the prevention of erosion.

#2577

Theresa A. Jones

#118753

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Theresa A. Jones is a researcher and professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the Institute for Neuroscience. Her interests are in neural plasticity across the lifespan, motor skill learning, mechanisms of brain and behavioral adaptation to brain damage, and glial-neuronal interactions. Her research is on the brain changes following stroke, in particular rehabilitation strategies and the brain changes associated with them. She primarily tests rats and uses the Endothelin-1 stroke model. Her most recent work has expanded into the field of microstimulation mapping of the rat cortex.

#2578

Maria Lehtinen

#147736

Overall Influence

Maria K. Lehtinen is a neuroscientist and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. She is a New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Neuroscience Investigator and holds the Hannah C. Kinney, MD Chair in Pediatric Pathology Research at Boston Children's Hospital. Her research focuses on cerebrospinal fluid-based signaling in the central nervous system.

#2579

Giovanna Mallucci

Giovanna Mallucci

#122222

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Giovanna Rachele Mallucci is van Geest Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge in England and associate director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Cambridge. She is a specialist in neurodegenerative diseases.

#2580

Laurinda Jaffe

#170432

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Laurinda A. Jaffe is an American biologist who is a Professor and chair at the University of Connecticut. Her research considers the physiological mechanisms that regulate oocyte cell and fertilisation. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

#2581

Carolyn Williamson

#120965

Overall Influence

Carolyn Williamson is a South African virologist and microbiologist who is a professor of medical virology at the University of Cape Town. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and the African Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. Her research focuses on HIV vaccine development and prevention of the disease.

#2582

Kerstin Krieglstein

#170995

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Kerstin Krieglstein is a German neuroscientist. She is the head of the University of Freiburg since 2020, after serving in the same position at the University of Konstanz from 2018 to 2020. Personal life Kerstin Krieglstein was born in Erlangen, Germany. She is married to Klaus Unsicker, who is also a German neuroscientist. Together they have two children, Christine Unsicker and Sebastian Unsicker.

#2583

Carolina Barillas-Mury

#171229

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Carolina Barillas-Mury is the chair of the Mosquito Immunity and Vector Competence Section and Director of the Malaria Research Program at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. She studies how mosquitos transmit diseases like malaria, and in recognition of her research, she has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

#2584

Ling Meng

#162088

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Ling Meng is a Chinese plant biologist in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She is best known for discovering a novel form of cellular communication in plants. Thioredoxin, while known to play an important role in biological processes such as cellular redox, is not fully understood in function. Meng's work at Berkeley has suggested that thioredoxin h9 is associated with the plasma membrane and is capable of moving from cell to cell through two important protein post-translation modifications: myristoylation and palmitoylation.

#2585

Martha Christensen

#127888

Overall Influence

1932 - 2017 (85 years)

Dr. Martha Christensen was an American mycologist, botanist and educator known as an expert in fungal taxonomy and ecology, particularly for soil-dwelling fungi in the genera Aspergillus and Penicillium.

#2586

Tuula Teeri

#85045

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Tuula Teeri is a Finnish molecular geneticist and the President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences . She has previously been a Vice President at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and President of Aalto University from April 1, 2009 to 2017. Professor Teeri started as the President of IVA on November 1, 2017

#2587

Cynthia Whitchurch

#152802

Overall Influence

Cynthia B. Whitchurch is an Australian microbiologist. Whitchurch is a research group leader at the Quadram Institute on the Norwich Research Park in the United Kingdom and was previously the founding director of the Microbial Imaging Facility and a Research Group Leader in the Institute of Infection, Immunity and Innovation at the University of Technology Sydney in New South Wales.

#2588

Amy Andreotti

#164420

Overall Influence

Amy Hamilton Andreotti is an American biochemist who is the Roy J. Carver Chair and University Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology at Iowa State University. Her research considers TEC kinases including Bruton's Tyrosine Kinase and IL-2 Inducible T-cell Kinase .

#2589

Marina Zerova

#166048

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Marina Dmitrievna Zerova was a Ukrainian entomologist. Several insects have been named after her. She became , Professor and . In 1981 she was awarded the . Career In 1957 she graduated from the Department of Invertebrate Zoology in the Faculty of Biology, University of Kiyv. She had specialised in entomology under the guidance of Olexandr Filippovich Kryshtal. Until 1963, she worked at the Zoological Museum of Kiyv University, after which she entered the graduate school of the Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In 1966, she defended her Ph.D. on research into wasps in the groups Eurytomidae and Harmolitinae.

#2590

Kathleen Weathers

#171696

Overall Influence

Kathleen C. Weathers is an ecosystem scientist and the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Chair in Ecology at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Her expertise focuses on understanding the ecology of air-land-water interactions. Weathers is the current elected President of the Ecological Society of America .

#2591

Geraldine Butler

#158910

Overall Influence

Geraldine Butler is a geneticist at University College Dublin. Her research career has mostly been focused on the genetics of fungi. In 2015, she was elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Education Butler graduated in 1984 with a BA in genetics from Trinity College Dublin. On the same year, she began a PhD in genetics at the same institution, which she completed in 1989. She became a lecturer in 1992, a senior lecturer in 2002, an associate professor in 2006, and a full professor in 2012.

#2592

Katharina Ribbeck

#168655

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Katharina Ribbeck is a German-American biologist. She is the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is known as one of the first researchers to study how mucus impacts microbial behavior. Ribbeck investigates both the function of mucus as a barrier to pathogens such as fungi, bacteria, and viruses and how mucus can be leveraged for therapeutic purposes. She has also studied changes that cervical mucus undergoes before birth, which may lead to a novel diagnostic for the risk of preterm birth.

#2593

Ann Nardulli

#100438

Overall Influence

1948 - 2018 (70 years)

Ann M. Nardulli was an American endocrinologist known for her research into the role of estrogen in breast cancer. Biography Ann Wannemacher was born in 1948 in Morrison, Illinois, to Rita and Rudolph Wannemacher of Hooppole.

#2594

Ana Maria Giulietti

#169178

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Ana Maria Giulietti Harley is a Brazilian biochemist, botanist, and educator known for researching Eriocaulaceae, as well as her work at the University of São Paulo, State University of Feira de Santana, and Vale Institute of Technology. She has described over 70 species and gathered over 300 specimens. She was the 2013 recipient of the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany.

#2595

Jennifer Nemhauser

#171677

Overall Influence

Jennifer Lyn Nemhauser is an American biologist and a Professor of Developmental Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. She specializes in synthetic biology, genomics, and signaling dynamics in plants.

#2596

Karen A. Lillycrop

#140563

Overall Influence

Karen A. Lillycrop is a British geneticist. She is professor of Epigenetics at the University of Southampton. She is listed as a notable scientist in Thomson Reuters' Highly Cited Researchers 2014, ranking her among the top 1% most cited scientists.

#2597

Sabine Landau

#116655

Overall Influence

Sabine Landau is Professor of Biostatistics at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. Landau was acting and then head of the Biostatistics Department in 2005–2009 and during 2008–2009 was the head of the Mental Health and Neurosciences Clinical Trials Unit.

#2598

Laura Mackay

#151628

Overall Influence

Laura K. Mackay is an internationally-recognised immunologist and Professor of Immunology at the University of Melbourne. Mackay is the Theme Leader in Immunology and Laboratory Head at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. In 2022, she was the youngest ever Fellow elected to the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

#2599

Lisa Mosconi

#105030

Overall Influence

Lisa Mosconi is an Italian American neuroscientist, educator, and author known for her books The XX Brain and Brain Food. She is the Director of the Women’s Brain Initiative and Director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic, both at Weill Cornell Medical College where she is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience in Neurology.

#2600

Margaret Collinson

#168620

Overall Influence

Margaret E. Collinson is a paleobotanist at Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom. Career Her career has led her to leadership of the Plant Paleobiology Research Group at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her research interests are interdisciplinary and wide-ranging within plant Paleobotany as evidenced by her publications. They particularly include consideration of geochemical signatures of oxygen, biomolecules and other elements; the paleoclimate and floral assemblages; pollen and other tissues; and evolution in ancient plants.

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