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,

#2701

Liane Russell

Liane Russell
#100346
Overall Influence
1923 - 2019 (96 years)
Liane Brauch "Lee" Russell was an Austrian-born American geneticist and conservationist. Her studies in mammalian genetics provided the basis for understanding the chromosomic basis for sex determination in mammals and the effects occasioned by radiation, drugs, fuels and waste on mice. Her research allowed better understanding of genetic processes in mammals, mutagenesis and teratogenesis effects on mammals, and knowledge of how these processes can be prevented and avoided. She determined that developing embryos were most vulnerable to the effects of radiation during the first seven weeks of...
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#2702

Jennifer Clare Jones

#113849
Overall Influence
Jennifer Clare Jones is an American radiation oncologist and biologist. She is an investigator and head of the translational nanobiology section at the National Cancer Institute. Education Jones completed a M.D. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is a board-certified radiation oncologist specialized training in radiosurgery, with graduate and postdoctoral training in both cancer biology and general immunology. Her doctoral advisor was . Jones' dissertation in 2001 was titled, Identification of Tapr, a T cell and airway phenotype regulatory locus, and positional cloning of the Tim gene fam...
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#2703

Lucia B. Rothman-Denes

#172162
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Lucia Beatriz Rothman-Denes is an Argentinian American microbiologist who is the A. J. Carlson Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Chicago. She is known for studying the regulation of transcription and host interactions that occur during bacterial virus infection. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014.
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#2704

Margaret Goodell

Margaret Goodell
#77262
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Margaret A. Goodell is an American scientist working in the field of stem cell research. Dr. Goodell is Chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine, Director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She is best known for her discovery of a novel method to isolate adult stem cells.
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#2705

Sharlene Newman

#107741
Overall Influence
Sharlene D. Newman is an American cognitive neuroscientist, executive director of the Alabama Life Research Institute at the University of Alabama , Professor in the Department of Psychology at UA, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University.
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#2706

Tuifuisaʻa Patila Amosa

#91405
Overall Influence
Tuifuisaʻa Patila Malua Amosa is a Samoan oceanographer. She is Dean of Sciences at the National University of Samoa. Amosa was educated at Flinders University in Australia and the University of Otago in New Zealand, graduating with an MSc in Environmental Science in 2007 and a PhD in Chemistry in 2015. Her PhD was on ocean acidification.
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#2707

Kathleen Gates

#126045
Overall Influence
Kathleen Marie "Katie" Gates is an American neuroscientist, quantitative psychologist, and faculty member in the L. L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is known for her contributions to network analysis, time series analysis, and structural equation modeling toward the development and dissemination of methods for quantifying intra-individual change and person-specific processes as they unfold across time.
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#2708

Sue Povey

Sue Povey
#140905
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Professor Susan Povey FMedSci , was a British geneticist. Life She was born in Leeds, the daughter of Jack Povey, a physics teacher at St Michael's College, and his wife Margaret Robertson, a paediatrician who was the first female graduate of Leeds Medical School. She was educated at Notre Dame Collegiate School for Girls, and then entered Girton College, Cambridge.
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#2709

Talita Fontoura Alves

#172852
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Talita Fontoura Alves is a Brazilian botanist. She is a professor of biology and botany at the State University of Santa Cruz in Ilhéus, Brazil. She is notable for the discovery and naming of Quesnelia alborosea, a member of the Bromeliaceae native to the Bahia area of Brazil.
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#2710

Nicole Doria-Rose

#172813
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Nicole Amy Doria-Rose is an American biologist. She is chief of the humoral immunology core at the Vaccine Research Center. She develops and applies assays to evaluate HIV-1 specific antibody responses during natural infection and after immunization.
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#2711

Bente Gunnveig Berg

#164163
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Bente Gunnveig Berg is a Norwegian neuroscientist and Professor of Neuroscience at the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology . Her research seeks to understand how the brain processes olfactory information, including how signals are encoded in a functional neural network. She is a member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.
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#2712

Stephanie Carlson

#124393
Overall Influence
Stephanie M. Carlson is the A.S. Leopold Chair in Wildlife Biology at the University of California Berkeley. Her research considers fish ecology, freshwater ecology, and evolutionary ecology. Education Carlson was the first member of her family to attend college. She earned her undergraduate degree in evolution and ecology at the University of California, Davis. She moved across the United States for her graduate studies, joining the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Massachusetts for a master's degree. After completing her master's degree in 2002, Carlson...
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#2713

Jadranka Lončarek

#170468
Overall Influence
Jadranka Lončarek is a Croatian cell and molecular biologist researching the molecular mechanism of centrosome biogenesis and their function, with particular attention on numerical control of centrosome formation in non-transformed and cancerous human cells.
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#2714

Joan Robb

#169015
Overall Influence
1921 - 2017 (96 years)
Joan Robb was a New Zealand herpetologist and wildlife tour guide. Academic career Robb grew up in Gisborne, and was educated at home through the Correspondence School. After a Diploma in Agriculture from Massey Agricultural College, she studied at the University of Auckland, graduating with an MSc in zoology in 1956. Robb then worked in the Department of Zoology at the University of Auckland, becoming an associate professor in 1967. She taught vertebrate form and function. She retired in 1978, after which she became a tour guide for wildlife tours to Malaysia, Nepal, China, Australia, and Af...
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#2715

Rosemary Collier

#172515
Overall Influence
Rosemary H. Collier FRES is an entomologist and applied ecologist in the UK. In 2019 she became professor at the University of Warwick. Education and career Collier did a BSc in Zoology, a MSc in Applied Entomology and a PhD looking at a group pest caterpillars, the cutworms. In 2010 she was appointed Director of Warwick Crop Centre and in 2019 she was appointed Professor at the University of Warwick.
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#2716

Jan Salick

#173471
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jan Salick is an American botanist who researches the interaction between humans and plants and conservation biology. Her specialisms include alpine environmentss, climate change, indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge. She is a past-president of the Society for Economic Botany and holds their Distinguished Economic Botanist award. She is also Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received the Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration. In 2019 she retired as Senior Curator of Ethnobotany at the Missouri Botanical Garden, and now has emerita status.
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#2717

Nicola Royle

Nicola Royle
#173873
Overall Influence
Nicola Jane Royle is a British geneticist who heads the Telomere Research Group in the Department of Genetics and Genome Biology at the University of Leicester. She is a specialist in the cellular processes that affect the stability of telomeres, the essential DNA-protein structures that cap the ends of chromosomes and play significant roles in cancer and ageing.
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#2718

Amanda Callaghan

#117787
Overall Influence
Amanda Callaghan FRES is an entomologist in the United Kingdom. Education and career Callaghan was awarded a PhD in Insect Biochemistry from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1989, she then moved to the University of Montpellier as a Royal Society Science Exchange fellow.
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#2719

Lucinda A. McDade

#174748
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Dr. Lucinda A. McDade is an American botanist and plant collector who is noted for her study of Acanthaceae and her work in conservation biology. She received her B.S. in Biology from Newcomb College of Tulane University, and her Ph.D. in Botany/Zoology from Duke University.
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#2720

Bríd Ryan

#157729
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Bríd M. Ryan is an Irish biomedical scientist and cancer researcher. She was an investigator at the National Cancer Institute from 2013 to 2021. Early life and education Ryan grew up on a farm and dairy in Ireland. She has five sisters. Ryan always enjoyed science and decided she wanted to be a cancer researcher as a teenager. She completed her undergraduate training in biochemistry at University College Cork in 2001. Ryan received her Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from St. Vincent’s University Hospital and UCD School of Medicine and in 2005 was accepted into the National Cancer Institute Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program.
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#2721

Elisabeth Tschermak-Woess

#170256
Overall Influence
1917 - 2001 (84 years)
Elisabeth Tschermak-Woess was an Austrian University lecturer, cytologist, and phycologist who worked with lichen photobionts. In 1994, Tschermak-Woess was awarded the Acharius Medal for her lifetime contributions to lichenology. She had a Festschrift dedicated to her in 1988, in the journal Plant Systematics and Evolution . Lichen taxa that have been named after Tschermak-Woess include the genus Woessia and the species Asterochloris woessiae.
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#2722

Cat Hobaiter

#158761
Overall Influence
Catherine Hobaiter is a British primatologist focusing on social behaviour in wild chimpanzees and involved in long-term studies of chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda. She is particularly interested in the role gestures play in communication. She is a lecturer at the University of St Andrews.
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#2723

Greta Binford

#94446
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Greta J. Binford is a United States arachnologist, specialising in studies of spider venom. She is a Professor of Biology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. As a child, Binford was raised on a small corn-and-soybean farm in west-central Indiana. From 1983 to 1985 she studied psychology at Purdue University, after an abortive attempt at a degree in veterinary medicine. While qualifying to be a science teacher at Miami University, she was offered the chance to study spiders in Peru's Amazon basin for the summer, and obtained a B.A. in Zoology at Miami in 1990. Afterwards, she undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Utah from 1991–1993, obtaining an M.S.
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#2724

Helen K. Larson

#173785
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Helen K. Larson is an ichthyologist who specialises in the fishes of the Indo-Pacific. In the 1960s and 1970s, she attended the University of Guam to study for her Bachelor's and master's degrees and while there she also worked in the local Marine Laboratory. While there she collected and described a new species of the dwarf goby from the genus Eviota, Eviota pellucida, the description being published in 1976 in the journal Copeia. This was her first description of a new species. Her Masters was called Notes on the biology and comparative behaviour of Eviota zonura and Eviota smaragdus . She g...
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#2725

Alison Mercer

#153564
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Alison Ruth Mercer is a New Zealand zoologist based at the University of Otago, with a particular interest in the brain physiology of bees. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
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#2726

Joan Bailey-Wilson

Joan Bailey-Wilson
#166299
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Joan Ellen Bailey-Wilson is an American statistical geneticist. She is a senior investigator and co-chief of the Computational and Statistical Genomic Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute.
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#2727

Jennifer Shay

#130029
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
Jennifer Mary Shay, , was a Canadian academic and ecologist. Born in Hull, England, the daughter of Frank and Kathleen Walker, she received a Bachelor of Science from the University of London in 1952. After moving to Canada in 1957, she completed her Master of Science in 1959 and her Doctor of Philosophy in Science in 1964 from the University of Manitoba. In 1965, she became an assistant professor, promoted to associate professor in 1967, and full professor in 1975. From 1966 to 1986, she was the founding director of the Delta Marsh Field Station, a research and teaching facility of the Faculty of Science located on the south shore of Lake Manitoba.
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#2728

Jennifer Provencher

Jennifer Provencher
#167494
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Jennifer F. Provencher is a Canadian conservation biologist. She is an early-career researcher and a spokesperson for the awareness of plastic contaminants in marine wildlife, pollution and climate change. Many of her work focus on the impact of human activities on the health of Arctic seabirds and marine ecosystems.
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#2729

Caroline C. Ummenhofer

#155713
Overall Influence
Caroline C. Ummenhofer is a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where she studies extreme weather events with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean. Ummenhofer makes an effort to connect her discoveries about predicting extreme weather events and precipitation to helping the nations affected.
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#2730

Susan Serjeantson

#124329
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Susan Wyber Serjeantson is an Australian geneticist and professor of genetics at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University. Academic career Born Susan Wyber in 1946 in Riverstone, New South Wales, Serjeantson was educated at Caringbah High School. She was dux and school captain in 1963.
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#2731

Christine Figgener

#75833
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Christine Figgener is a German marine conservation biologist, author, science communicator, and ocean advocate recognized for her work in sea turtle conservation, the fight against plastic pollution, and the empowerment of women in STEM. She is best known for documenting the removal of a plastic straw from a sea turtle's nose in a YouTube video that went viral in 2015. This video, which was featured in popular media outlets such as National Geographic, HuffPost, The New York Times, ABC News, and CNN, highlighted the dangers of plastic pollution on marine wildlife and was a catalyst for the gl...
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#2732

Isabel Lastres Becker

#164189
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Isabel Ballasts Becker is a German-Spanish scientist and chemist on the faculty of biochemistry in the medical department at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Life She graduated in chemical sciences, specialising in biochemistry from the Complutense University of Madrid. Her work centres on the molecular basis of several neurodegenerative illnesses, like Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease. In her project, she studies the cause of neuron death in Parkinson's, and experiments with drugs to delay the advance of the illness.
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#2733

Paula Jameson

#168558
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Paula Elizabeth Jameson is a New Zealand plant physiologist. Biography In1982 Jameson was awarded a PhD titled 'A study on the role of cytokinins in the development of starch accumulating structures from the University of Canterbury. After working at Otago University and serving as head of department at Massey University, Jameson moved to the University of Canterbury. Jameson is a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science and a life member of the New Zealand Society of Plant Physiologists.
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#2734

Dorothea Fiedler

#120406
Overall Influence
Dorothea Fiedler is a chemical biologist and also the first female director of the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie in Berlin, Germany. Early life and education Fiedler grew up in Hamburg. She studied inorganic chemistry at the University of Würzburg, then carried out doctorate research on organometallic chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley.
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#2735

Leah Gerber

#123799
Overall Influence
Leah R. Gerber is a conservation biologist and environmental scientist most known for her contributions to the field of biodiversity conservation. She has conducted research on population ecology, conservation decision-making, and the application of innovative quantitative methods in conservation biology.
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#2736

Margaret Rioch

#116952
Overall Influence
1907 - 1996 (89 years)
Margaret Jeffrey Rioch was an American psychotherapist, internationally known for her critical work in the field of psychology. She is best known for her role in establishing a new method of training for mental health counselors. Rioch's publications and projects have directly led to the current systems of mental health care treatment. Notable methods that have stemmed from her work include crisis hotlines and the use of support groups. She died in 1996 at the age of 89.
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#2737

Karin Broberg

#171686
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Karin Broberg is a Swedish geneticist and toxicologist and professor at Karolinska Institutet and Lund University, Sweden, known for her work on human adaptation to challenging environments. Education and career Broberg became M.Sc. in Biology from Lund University in 1996 and MD in Experimental Clinical Genetics, Lund University in 2001. In 2015, she became Professor of Environmental Medicine with a special emphasis on genetics and epigenetics at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, and since 2018 also holds a professorship in Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Lund University.
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#2738

Isobel Heyman

#171092
Overall Influence
Isobel Heyman is a British psychiatrist and consultant at the Great Ormond Street Hospital. She was named as the Royal College of Psychiatrists Psychiatrist of the Year in 2015. Early life and education Heyman first studied pharmacology, before training in medicine at the UCL Medical School. She trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital. She earned a doctorate in developmental neurobiology at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, where she investigated rhombomere boundaries. In 1995 she returned to the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, where she specialised in ch...
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#2739

Kristine Beate Walhovd

#91259
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Kristine Beate Walhovd is a Norwegian psychologist, neuroscientist and Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Oslo. Together with fellow neuroscientist Anders Fjell, she established the Centre of Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition at the University of Oslo, which was given the status of "world leading research environment" by the Government of Norway in 2015. She and Anders Fjell shared the Fridtjof Nansen Prize in 2007. She was elected as a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2011. In 2017 she received a European Research Council consolidator grant. Acco...
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#2740

Monita Chatterjee

#100590
Overall Influence
Monita Chatterjee is an auditory scientist and the Director of the Auditory Prostheses & Perception Laboratory at Boys Town National Research Hospital. She investigates the basic mechanisms underlying auditory processing by cochlear implant listeners.
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#2741

Tatjana Tchumatchenko

#119351
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Tatjana Tchumatchenko is a physicist in the field of theoretical neuroscience. She is an independent Max Planck Group Leader and, since November 2020, professor for Computational Neuroscience of Behavior at the Faculty of Medicine of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . In her research she investigates how neural networks compute and how particular activity patterns emerge from synaptic and neuronal features.
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#2742

Esmé Frances Hennessy

#125417
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Dr. Esmé Frances Franklin Hennessy was a South African professor of Botany, botanical illustrator, and author. She specialized in taxonomic botany. She wrote and illustrated South African Erythrinas , Orchids of Africa with Joyce Stewart, The Slipper Orchids with Tessa Hedge, and created many of the descriptions and plates in Flowering Plants of Africa as well as numerous private collections.
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#2743

Saskia Hogenhout

#173466
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Saskia A. Hogenhout FRES , is a Dutch professor of entomology and ecology specialising in molecular plant, microbe and insect interactions. Education and career Hogenhout was educated at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with an MSc in Biology in 1994, her PhD looked at the molecular basis of luteovirus-aphid interactions and was awarded at Wageningen University in 1999. She moved to Ohio State University to be assistant and then associate professor and since 2007 has been Group Leader in plant health at the John Innes Centre in Norwich.
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#2744

Anubha Mahajan

#172493
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Anubha Mahajan is a human genetics researcher whose career has focused on genetic analysis of complex traits, with an emphasis on type 2 diabetes. Mahajan has co-led and led analysis of high-throughput genetic studies as part of large international consortia, such as DIAGRAM, GoT2D, T2D-GENES, and DIAMANTE, that explore the genetic architecture of type 2 diabetes. More recently, she has moved from genetic discovery to utilizing human genetics research to understand the pathophysiological mechanisms that contribute to type 2 diabetes.
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#2745

Cyma Van Petten

#160269
Overall Influence
Cyma Kathryn Van Petten is an American cognitive neuroscientist known for electrophysiological studies of language, memory, and cognition. She is Professor of Psychology at the State University of New York at Binghamton where she directs the Event-Related Potential Lab. Van Petten was recipient of the Early Career Award from the Society for Psychophysiological Research in 1994.
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#2746

Kate Wassum

#162839
Overall Influence
Kate Wassum is an American neuroscientist and professor of behavioral neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles. Wassum probes the neural circuits underlying appetitive associative learning the circuit dynamics that give rise to diverse motivated behaviors.
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#2747

Kathryn Abel

#131295
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Kathryn M. Abel FRCP FRCPsych is co-Chair of the Office for Life Sciences and UK Govt's Mental Health Mission and NIHR National Lead for Mental Health Lead. She is an internationally recognised British psychiatrist specialising clinically in resistant schizophrenia and gender-specified service developments. She is a clinical academic, professor of Psychological Medicine and Director of both the Centre for Women's Mental Health and GM.Digital Research Unit at the University of Manchester.
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#2748

Jessica Barson

Jessica Barson
#102712
Overall Influence
Jessica Barson is an American neuroscientist and associate professor at Drexel University College of Medicine. Barson investigates neuropeptide signalling in the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus as well as the nucleus accumbens to understand the neurobiological basis of addiction and elucidate targets for therapy.
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#2749

Isabelle Chuine

#172941
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Isabelle Chuine is a French ecologist. She is CEFE-CNRS Research Director in Functional and Evolutionary Ecology. Chuine was awarded a 2020 CNRS silver medal for her work. Life and career She is a professor at University Montpellier 2. In 1999, she presented at the 16th Botanical conference. At 2020 Science Day, she gave a lecture. She collected citizens science data, about plant flowering.
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#2750

Wilma M. Blom

Wilma M. Blom
#175516
Overall Influence
Wilma M. Blom is a marine scientist. Since 2011 she has been Curator, Marine Invertebrates at Auckland War Memorial Museum. Biography Blom's work focuses on identifying marine fauna, such as molluscs. She also works in science communication, through projects such as Auckland Museum's New Zealand Marine Life app. She also organises a 2-yearly BioBlitz programme which places scientists alongside communities to help them document the biodiversity of their surrounding area, and has been involved in research projects involving The Noises. She has contributed to the collections of Auckland Museum an...
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