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,
#2801
Ann Gargett
#148161
Overall Influence
Ann Gargett is a Canadian oceanographer known for her research on measuring turbulence and its impact on biological processes in marine ecosystems. Education and career Gargett has B.Sc. in mathematics and physics from the University of Manitoba and Ph.D. in physics from the University of British Columbia . Subsequently she held a NATO postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Oceanography and was a Green's Fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She has held multiple positions at the Institute of Ocean Sciences and as of 2008 is an Emerita Senior Scientist. In 2001, she joined Old Dominion University as a professor and transitioned into emerita professor in 2008.
Go to Profile#2802
Sonia Kéfi
#138268
Overall Influence
Sonia Kéfi is a network scientist and systems ecologist who studies ecosystem dynamics and the resilience of ecosystems to climate change and human land use. She works for the French National Centre for Scientific Research in the Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier, associated with the University of Montpellier, and is also affiliated as an external professor with the Santa Fe Institute.
Go to Profile#2803
Caitilyn Allen
#151008
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Caitilyn Allen is an American plant pathologist, specializing in phytobacteriology . She is an internationally recognized expert on bacterial wilt and has received several awards for her work. Education and career Caitilyn Allen grew up in the USA's Midwest. She studied from 1975 to 1978 at Swarthmore College and then worked on a farm growing organic vegetables, but the venture was unprofitable. She studied for the academic year 1980–1981 at the University of Maine at Orono, where she graduated with a B.S. in botany. In 1987 she graduated with a Ph.D. in plant pathology from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Go to Profile#2804
Deepti Gurdasani
#55851
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Deepti Gurdasani is a British-Indian clinical epidemiologist and statistical geneticist who is a senior lecturer in machine learning at the Queen Mary University of London. Her research considers the genetic diversity of African Populations. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Gurdasani has provided the public with her analysis of the evolving situation mainly on the Twitter platform.
Go to Profile#2805
Laurel Haak
#71635
Overall Influence
Laurel L. Haak, known as Laure, was the founding Executive Director of ORCID, an international non-profit which generates and maintains unique identifiers for individuals to participate in the research lifecycle.
Go to Profile#2806
Jessica Green
#121698
Overall Influence
Jessica Green is an American entrepreneur, engineer, and ecologist. She is CEO of Phylagen, Inc., a biotech startup developing tools to monitor the microbiology of air. Prior to Phylagen, she was a Professor of Biology at the University of Oregon and co-founding director of the Biology and Built Environment Center. Green’s two talks at the TED Conferences on the Microbiomes of the built environment have received over 1.7 million views.
Go to Profile#2807
Asunción Linares
#114912
Overall Influence
1921 - 2005 (84 years)
Asunción Linares Rodríguez was a Spanish paleontologist who excelled in teaching and research. She earned a degree in Natural Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid, obtaining her doctorate in 1952 under the direction of . She became the Chair of Paleontology at the University of Granada in 1961, being the first woman to obtain such a position on a science faculty in Spain, and the second to become a full professor after the Civil War. Regarding her academic relevance, she stood out for the direction of numerous doctoral works over her career.
Go to Profile#2808
Aimee Dunlap
#172191
Overall Influence
Aimee Dunlap is a North American cognitive ecologist and associate professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She is known for her work on the role of environmental variability in the evolution and ecological function of cognition.
Go to Profile#2809
Kelly Ten Hagen
#103803
Overall Influence
Kelly Greig Ten Hagen is an American glycobiologist and head of the developmental glycobiology section at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. She studies O-glycosylation regulation and its relationship to human disease.
Go to Profile#2810
Melissa A. Wilson
#169988
Overall Influence
Melissa A. Wilson is an evolutionary and computational biologist and assistant professor at Arizona State University who studies the evolution of sex chromosomes. Personal life and education Wilson was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and lived there until she was five, then moving to Garland, Texas, then Tempe, Arizona, then to Syracuse, Nebraska. She graduated from Syracuse High School in Nebraska and received her B.S. in Medical Mathematics with Honors in May 2005 from Creighton University under Lance Nielsen.
Go to Profile#2811
Caroline Tiemessen
#175043
Overall Influence
Caroline Tiemessen is a virologist and researcher involved in HIV related research. She heads the Cell Biology Research Laboratory within the Centre for HIV and STIs at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases and is a research Professor in the School of Pathology at the University of the Witwatersrand . Her research interests include the study of HIV vaccines and the search for an HIV cure in both children and adults. In 2018 she was part of the research team involved with the transplantation of a liver from an HIV-positive woman to her HIV-negative child.
Go to Profile#2812
Dipshikha Chakravortty
#59569
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Dipshikha Chakravortty is an Indian microbiologist, molecular pathologist and a professor at the department of Microbiology and Cell Biology at the Indian Institute of Science. Known for her studies on Salmonella and antibacterial resistance, Chakravortty is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for her contributions to biosciences, in...
Go to Profile#2813
Gail Davey
#103311
Overall Influence
Gail Davey OBE is a professor of epidemiology at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Sussex, UK. Her work focuses on Neglected Tropical Diseases, particular podoconiosis. Career Davey specialises in neglected tropical diseases, especially ones that involve the skin. After taking an MBBChir degree in medicine, she trained in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, gaining Masters and MD degrees. She then worked at the School of Public Health, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia for almost a decade, developing training programmes in public health to doctora...
Go to Profile#2814
Nancy Tuchman
#99856
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Nancy Tuchman is an American environmental scientist, educator, and activist. She specializes on human impacts on aquatic ecosystem function, with a focus on coastal Great Lake ecosystems. Tuchman is dedicated to raising public awareness about issues of global climate change and education. Her dedication is shown through her thirty years of educating students in environmental sciences at Loyola University Chicago. In 2013 she founded the Institute of Environmental Sustainability on Loyola University's campus - which later became the School of Environmental Sustainability in late 2020 - and is...
Go to Profile#2815
Evelyn Lessard
#120282
Overall Influence
Evelyn Lessard is a biological oceanographer and a professor at the University of Washington's School of Oceanography. Early life Growing up in Connecticut, Lessard graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont, before completing further study in Oceanography at University of Rhode Island. Although she enjoyed science as a child, Lessard credits one of her biology university lecturers with inspiring her into the field of marine biology, and chose the field of Oceanography due to the potential for field work and travel.
Go to Profile#2816
Sophie Warny
#77132
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Sophie Warny is a Belgian Antarctic researcher, best known for her work on palynology. As an associate professor at Louisiana State University in the Department of Geology and Geophysics and one of the curators at the Museum of Natural Science, Warny studies past climate change patterns by examining fossilized pollen and spores. She is currently the vice president of the Gulf Coast Section of the Society for Sedimentary Geology .
Go to Profile#2817
Valina L. Dawson
#164831
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Valina L. Dawson is an American neuroscientist who is the director of the Programs in Neuroregeneration and Stem Cells at the Institute for Cell Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She has joint appointments in the Department of Neurology, Neuroscience and Physiology. She is a member of the Graduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology.
Go to Profile#2818
Sonia Kleindorfer
#174742
Overall Influence
Sonia Kleindorfer is a bird ecology expert with a focus on organismal complexity and the impact animals have on evolutionary dynamics in birds and parasites. In 2016 she received the D. L. Serventy Medal from BirdLife Australia. She heads Grünau’s Core Facility Konrad Lorenz Research Station for Behaviour and Cognition and is Scientific Director of the Flinders Research Centre for Climate Adaptation and Animal Behaviour. Other related roles include: Treasurer of the Royal Society of South Australia after which she was promoted to Vice President. Kleindorfer has a Bachelors in Biological Basis...
Go to Profile#2819
Esta Sterneck
#174865
Overall Influence
Esta Sterneck is an Austrian molecular biologist researching the functions of the C/EBPδ][CEBPD transcription factor as tumor suppressor as well as tumor promoter in breast epithelial cells and cells of the tumor microenvironment. She is a senior investigator and head of the molecular mechanisms in development section at the National Cancer Institute.
Go to Profile#2820
Denise Breitburg
#149998
Overall Influence
Denise Breitburg is an American marine ecologist specializing in the effects of deoxygenation on marine systems and organisms such as oysters and jellyfish. She is Scientist Emeritus, at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center .
Go to Profile#2821
Julie LaRoche
#119731
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Julie LaRoche is a Canadian marine biologist. She is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Marine Microbial Genomics and Biogeochemistry at Dalhousie University. Early life and education LaRoche was born in Quebec, Canada, in 1957. She earned her Bachelor of Science from McGill University and her PhD in Biological Oceanography at Dalhousie University. While earning her PhD at Dalhouse, she met her future husband Douglas Wallace.
Go to Profile#2822
Margarita Costa Tenorio
#155289
Overall Influence
1951 - 2012 (61 years)
Margarita Costa Tenorio was a Spanish biologist specialised in botany. She was a professor of the Complutense University of Madrid. Biography Margarita Costa Tenorio grew up in Vigo, moved with her family to Madrid and studied biology in the Complutense University of Madrid. In 1974 she joined the Plant Biology Department at the Faculty of Biology, in 1978 completed her PhD and continued working as a professor until her retirement in 2011.
Go to Profile#2823
Helen Elizabeth Shearburn Clark
#89463
Overall Influence
1936 - 2014 (78 years)
Helen Elizabeth Shearburn Rotman was a New Zealand expert on echinoderms, specifically starfish. She was born in Napier in 1936 and attended Nelson Park Primary School and Woodford House school . Education Her association with echinoderms began while developing a M.Sc. topic in Zoology at Victoria University in Wellington, supervised by Dr. H. B. Fell. This was after being told by a professor that he was "not having women in my department". This led to a focus on Southern Ocean asteroids . She completed her MSc at VUW in 1961 and her PhD was conferred at the same institution 1969–70. The P...
Go to Profile#2824
Collin Roesler
#155324
Overall Influence
Collin Roesler is an American oceanographer. She is known for her work on optical oceanography, including research on harmful algal blooms in the Gulf of Maine and green icebergs. Education Roesler earned her PhD at the University of Washington, where she studied satellite measurement of phytoplankton concentrations. She grew up in Colorado.
Go to Profile#2825
Mona Loutfy
#168693
Overall Influence
Mona R. Loutfy is a Canadian clinician-scientist and infectious disease specialist. Early life and education Loutfy earned her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Western Ontario and her medical degree from the University of Toronto. Following this, she completed her Internal Medicine Residency in 1999 and her Infectious Diseases Fellowship in 2001 at the University of Toronto. Loutfy then did a Master's of Public Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2002 and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at McGill University.
Go to Profile#2826
Nora Fisher McMillan
#169331
Overall Influence
1908 - 2003 (95 years)
Born Eleanor Fisher, the first of Ernest and Janet Fisher's two daughters, in Belfast on 16 March 1908, but known even then as "Nora", Nora Fisher McMillan, as she became, was a larger-than-life self-taught expert in natural history, especially conchology, specialising in post-glacial fresh-water Mollusca, but with broad academic interests in the history of natural history, geology and other areas, as well as being a keen amateur botanist, naturalist and local historian. She wrote prolifically, with over 400 publications to her name.
Go to Profile#2827
Susan Dymecki
#170195
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Susan M. Dymecki is an American geneticist and neuroscientist and director of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences PhD Program at Harvard University. Dymecki is also a professor in the Department of Genetics and the principal investigator of the Dymecki Lab at Harvard. Her lab characterizes the development and function of unique populations of serotonergic neurons in the mouse brain. To enable this functional dissection, Dymecki has pioneered several transgenic tools for probing neural circuit development and function. Dymecki also competed internationally as an ice dancer, placing 7th in the 1980 U.S.
Go to Profile#2828
Nadine Barrie Smith
#101391
Overall Influence
1962 - 2010 (48 years)
Nadine Barrie Smith was an American biomedical researcher in the field of therapeutic ultrasound and non-invasive drug delivery. She was also an educator and mentor, especially to women students. Personal life Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois to Jean and Barron Smith. The family has deep roots in Japan , associated with the Sekiguchi and Asaki clans. She has two sisters, Arnette Bosch and Jolene Smith. She graduated from Chicago’s Lane Tech High School in 1980. She was married to Andrew Webb in New Zealand. Outside of her scientific career, she was an accomplished sports photographer, equestrian, and mountaineer.
Go to Profile#2829
Anne Salomon
#138981
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Anne Katherine Salomon is a Canadian applied marine ecologist. She is an associate professor with the School of Resource and Environmental Management in the Faculty of Environment at Simon Fraser University. In 2019, Salomon was elected a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada.
Go to Profile#2830
Dorothy Yeboah-Manu
#124732
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Dorothy Yeboah-Manu is a microbiologist and Professor at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research at the University of Ghana. She studies host and pathogen interactions and epidemiology. She won the 2018 Royal Society Africa Prize.
Go to Profile#2831
Nancy Minshew
#103928
Overall Influence
Nancy Minshew is a Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Pittsburgh. She directs the Center of Excellence in Autism Research and is an internationally known expert in the cognitive, neurological, and genetic bases of autism. Minshew was trained as a behavioral child neurologist, and she received an M.D. from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Go to Profile#2832
Naomi Miller
#116381
Overall Influence
Naomi Miller is an archaeobotanist who works in western and central Asia. Miller is based at the University of Pennsylvania. Biography Miller completed her Ph.D. dissertation in 1982 in the Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan on archaeobotanical evidence for the economy and environment of third millennium BC Malyan in southern Iran.
Go to Profile#2833
Lynn Zechiedrich
#147905
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Lynn Zechiedrich is a professor in the department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine. Her laboratory's research considers the structure-function properties of DNA and DNA topoisomerases. She was elected to the National Academy of Inventors in 2017.
Go to Profile#2834
Peggy Lemaux
#176968
Overall Influence
Peggy Goodenow Lemaux is an American plant biologist. She won a 2003 Dennis R. Hoagland Award. She graduated from Miami University, and University of Michigan, She studied with Stan Cohen. She was a research scientist at DeKalb Genetics. She is a Professor of Cooperative Extension at the University of California, Berkeley. She won a grant from the Gates Foundation to study sorghum. She developed genetically modified varieties of barley, wheat and sorghum. She opposed an anti-GMO ballot initiative in California. She has several patents.
Go to Profile#2835
Sonya Legg
#79251
Overall Influence
Sonya Legg is a British oceanographer who is an Associate Director of the Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System at Princeton University. She studies the physical and dynamical processes of ocean circulation. Legg is involved with various initiatives to improve the representation of women in geoscience. She was Chair of the Mentoring Physical Oceanography Women to Increase Retention and is the co-chair of the Scientific Steering Group that directs the work of CLIVAR.
Go to Profile#2836
Caroline Genco
#101225
Overall Influence
Caroline Attardo Genco is an American microbiologist and academic administrator. She is the provost of Tufts University. Life Genco was born to Rita Galletti and Charles Attardo. She completed a B.S. in biology at State University of New York at Fredonia in 1981. She earned a M.S. and Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Rochester.
Go to Profile#2837
Marja Timmermans
#173069
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Marja Timmermans is a Dutch plant geneticist. Her research focuses on how leaves in plants develop on a molecular biological level. Timmermans studied biology at Rutgers University and Yale University. From 1998 she was affiliated with the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where she became an assistant professor in 2001 and a full professor in 2009. In 2015 she received a Humboldt Professorship and moved to the University of Tübingen.
Go to Profile#2838
Maruja Carrasco
#107793
Overall Influence
1944 - 2018 (74 years)
María Andrea Carrasco de Salazar, best known as Maruja Carrasco , was a Spanish botanist and academic. She had a key role in the modernization of herbaria in Spain. In 1967 she graduated in Biological Section Sciences, from the Complutense University of Madrid. A daughter of teachers, she always had an interest in teaching and, from that moment, began her relationship as a teacher, since she was hired as a teacher of practical classes, while the compatibility with a grant in the "Nuclear Energy Board". The following year, in 1968, she decided to leave for the United States, where she was hired by the University of Chicago for two years.
Go to Profile#2839
Carol Stepien
#176265
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Carol Ann Stepien is an American ecologist at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2016.
Go to Profile#2840
Sea Rotmann
#175031
Overall Influence
Sea Rotmann is a New Zealand-based marine biologist. She was a spokesperson and organiser for the Wellington chapter of environmental advocacy group Extinction Rebellion Aotearoa New Zealand. Biography Rotmann was born and raised in Austria. When she was 20, she moved to Australia and studied marine biology at James Cook University, Queensland. Her PhD thesis was in marine ecology and environmental studies, and focused on human-induced environmental impacts on coral reefs, including field research in Papua New Guinea.
Go to Profile#2841
Barbara A. Ambrose
#175197
Overall Influence
Barbara Ambrose is a botanist working in the field of Plant Evolutionary Developmental Biology . As the Director of Laboratory Research at the New York Botanical Garden, Ambrose is a prolific scholar and leader and mentor in her field who is interested in patterns in plant diversity on macro and micro scales.
Go to Profile#2842
Dinah Singer
#147954
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Dinah Schiffer Singer is an American immunologist specialized in the regulation of transcription in cancer, gene expression, and molecular immunology. She is the deputy director for scientific strategy and development at the National Cancer Institute . Singer was previously director of the NCI division of cancer biology from 1999 to 2019.
Go to Profile#2843
Maria Servedio
#176919
Overall Influence
Maria R. Servedio is a Canadian-American professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research spans a wide range of topics in evolutionary biology from sexual selection to evolution of behavior. She largely approaches these topics using mathematical models. Her current research interests include speciation and reinforcement, mate choice, and learning with a particular focus on evolutionary mechanisms that promote premating isolation. Through integrative approaches and collaborations, she uses mathematical models along with experimental, genetic, and comparative techniques to draw conclusions on how evolution occurs.
Go to Profile#2844
Anna J. Phillips
#132428
Overall Influence
Anna J. Phillips is an American Research Zoologist and curator of Clitellata and Cestoda at the National Museum of Natural History's Department of Invertebrate Zoology. As a parasitologist her research focuses on leeches and tapeworms, by studying their diversity, relationships, and host associations. She has traveled all over the world with her fieldwork to study the diversity of these invertebrates on a long range.
Go to Profile#2845
Nell I. Mondy
#117477
Overall Influence
1921 - 2005 (84 years)
Nell I. Mondy was an American biochemist known for her expertise regarding the potato. She spent the majority of her profession at Cornell University where in 1953 she earned a PhD in biochemistry and subsequently served as faculty there for nearly fifty years. In 1997, she received the first Elizabeth Fleming Stier Award.
Go to Profile#2846
Elizabeth Klerman
#177035
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Klerman is a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School whose research focuses on applying circadian and sleep research principles to human physiology and pathophysiology. She also uses mathematical analysis and modeling to study human circadian, sleep, and objective neurobehavioral performance and subjective mood and alertness rhythms.
Go to Profile#2847
Audrey van der Meer
#132404
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Audrey van der Meer is a Dutch-born Norwegian neuroscientist and Professor of Neuropsychology at the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology . With her husband, Professor of Cognitive Psychology Ruud van der Weel, she directs the Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory at NTNU. Her research seeks to understand the underlying principles that guide development, learning, and cognitive ageing. She joined the psychology department at NTNU in 1996, in the same year fellow neuroscientists Edvard Moser and May-Britt Moser joined the department; in 1997 she was promoted to full professor of neuroscience.
Go to Profile#2848
Maria Fadiman
#71018
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Maria Grace Fadiman is an American ethnobotanist and Professor of Geosciences at Florida Atlantic University. Biography Fadiman is the daughter of documentary filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman and psychologist and author James Fadiman. Clifton Fadiman was her granduncle, She is a distant cousin of Anne Fadiman and of William James Sidis, a child prodigy.
Go to Profile#2849
Renny Kurnia Hadiaty
#174035
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#2850
Elizabeth Canuel
#172289
Overall Influence
Elizabeth A. Canuel is a chemical oceanographer known for her work on organic carbon cycling in aquatic environments. She is the Chancellor Professor of Marine Science at the College of William & Mary and is an elected fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry.
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