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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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#2901

Marie Cassidy

#91036

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Marie Therese Jane Cassidy is a pathologist and academic. From 2004 to 2018 she was State Pathologist of Ireland, the first woman to hold the position. She is Professor of Forensic Medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland and Trinity College, Dublin.

#2902

Maria-Regina Kula

#169873

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Maria-Regina Kula is an inventor. She was one of the two prize winners of the German Future Prize in 2002. Also in 2002, she was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to the understanding and practice of enzyme-based chemical processes and protein separations.

#2903

Erika Edwards

#146204

Overall Influence

Erika Jeannine Edwards is a professor at Yale University known for her work on evolution of plants. She is also the director of the Marsh Botanical Garden. Education and career Edwards has a B.S. from Stanford University and earned her Ph.D. from Yale University where she worked on the evolution of the Pereskia, a genus of cactus. Following her Ph.D. she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara before accepting a position at Brown University as an assistant professor in 2007. In 2017 she moved to Yale University as a professor and director of the Marsh Bo...

#2904

Lisa Schulte Moore

#55021

Overall Influence

Lisa Schulte Moore is an American landscape ecologist. Schulte Moore is a professor of natural resource ecology and management at Iowa State University. In 2020 she received a $10 million USD grant to study anerobic digestion and its application to turning manure into usable energy. In 2021 she was named a MacArthur fellow.

#2905

Carla P. Catterall

#173286

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Carla Perdita Catterall is an Australian ecologist and ornithologist. As of 2021 she is Emeritus Professor at Griffith University. Career Born in 1951, Catterall graduated from the University of Queensland with a PhD in 1979. Her thesis, titled "Behavioural strategies of a silvereye population, , in relation to food resources, on a coral cay island", was published by the Royal Australian Ornithologists Union in 1982.

#2906

Patrizia Casaccia

#176473

Overall Influence

Patrizia Casaccia is an Italian neuroscientist who is the Director of the Neuroscience Initiative of the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University of New York , as well as a Professor of Neuroscience, Genetics & Genomics, and Neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Casaccia is a pioneer in the study of myelin. Her research focuses on understanding the neurobiological and neuroimmune mechanisms of multiple sclerosis and to translate findings into treatments. Casaccia co-founded the Center for Glial Biology at Mount Sinai and CUNY and is one of the Directors of th...

#2907

Elizabeth Quinlan

#173621

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Quinlan is an American neuroscientist and a professor at the University of Maryland. There she serves as the Clark Leadership Chair in Neuroscience and as the Director of the Brain and Behavior Institute . Her research focuses on understanding how the plasticity of juvenile and adult mammalian visual systems differ.

#2908

Anjali Kusumbe

#176756

Overall Influence

Anjali Kusumbe is a British-Indian biologist who is the Head of the Tissue and Tumour Microenvironments Group at the Medical Research Council Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford. She was awarded the Royal Microscopical Society Award for Life Sciences in 2022.

#2909

Giordana Grossi

#107392

Overall Influence

Giordana Grossi is a cognitive neuroscientist and professor of psychology at SUNY New Paltz, New York, and a member of The NeuroGenderings Network, a group which promotes "neurofeminism". Education Giordana Grossi received her Ph.D. from the University of Pavia, Italy, and her B.A. from the University of Padova, Italy.

#2910

Kathryn Albers

#178420

Overall Influence

Kathryn M. Albers is an American scientist. She is a professor of neurobiology and medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She is known for her research on nerve growth and the impact on sensory nerve abilities undergoing disfunction.

#2911

Virpi Lummaa

#178811

Overall Influence

Virpi Lummaa is a Finnish evolutionary biologist and ecologist. She is an Academy of Finland professor at the University of Turku. Her research interests include ageing, lifespan, and natural selection in contemporary human populations. In addition to her research into human evolution, Lummaa studies life history patterns, social behavior, and more in Asian elephants, another large, long-lived mammal. Lummaa is currently the Principal Investigator of both the Human Life History Group based at the University of Turku and the Myanmar Timber Elephant Project. She has received a starting grant fr...

#2912

Alison McCusker

#178853

Overall Influence

1933 - 2015 (82 years)

Alison McCusker was an Australian botanist and science administrator noted for orchestrating the creation of the multi-volume Flora of Australia while serving as the first Director of Flora Programs at Australian Biological Resources Study. In 1987 McCusker became Deputy Director of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, a branch of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization . McCusker was a 2009 recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia for her work on the Flora of Australia.

#2913

Julie Elizabeth Gough

#159768

Overall Influence

Julie Elizabeth Gough is a Professor of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering at The University of Manchester. She specializes on controlling cellular responses at the cell-biomaterial interface by engineering defined surfaces for mechanically sensitive connective tissues.

#2914

Teresa Lebel

#174244

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Dr Teresa Lebel is a taxonomist and ecologist who works on fungi, with a particular interest in subterranean truffle-like fungi and their mushroom, bolete, bracket or cup relatives. Career Lebel studied at the University of Western Australia , then Oregon State University before taking up a position at the National Herbarium of Victoria as a mycologist , and Editor of Muelleria. During this time, Lebel undertook a two-year sabbatical on the Ross Beever Memorial Fellowship at Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research . Lebel is currently Senior Botanist and Curator Cryptogams at the State Herbarium ...

#2915

Wen Yumei

#159025

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Wen Yumei is a Chinese virologist and microbiologist and the current director of the Institute of Pathogenic Microorganisms, Fudan University. She is also the director of Scientific Committee of Open Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health.

#2916

Kath Dickinson

#178997

Overall Influence

Katharine Josephine Mary Dickinson is a New Zealand academic working in the field of botany. In 2009 the New Zealand Ecological Society awarded Dickinson the Te Tohu Taiao Award, an award for ecological excellence. As of 2018 she is a full professor at the University of Otago.

#2917

Jane Rylett

#161832

Overall Influence

Rebecca Jane Rylett is a Canadian molecular neurobiologist. , she is the Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Aging. As a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Western Ontario, Rylett also served as an Associate Dean in the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and chair of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology.

#2918

Amanda Swart

#141860

Overall Influence

Amanda Cecilia Swart is a South African biochemist who holds a professorship in biochemistry at Stellenbosch University. She is known for her research on rooibos, a herbal tea popular in South Africa, has been funded by the South African Rooibos Council in her research, and is frequently quoted in South African media promoting the reported health benefits of rooibos.

#2919

Djunijanti Peggie

#175996

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Djunijanti Peggie is an entomologist who specializes in Lepidoptera of Indonesia. She is a researcher and curator for the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. Peggie is the first Indonesian to become a butterfly researcher and author of books about butterflies. She is considered to be the mother of Indonesian butterfly studies.

#2920

Lorraine Friedman

#170364

Overall Influence

1919 - 2001 (82 years)

Lorraine Friedman was an American medical mycologist who was recruited to Tulane University to create a center for medical mycology. She was a faculty member at Tulane University from 1955-1981 where she extensively researched Tinea capitis, “Ringworm of the hair.” She was instrumental in creating the Medical Mycological Society of the Americas and served as the President in 1975.

#2921

Christina Gurnett

#171651

Overall Influence

Christina A. Gurnett is the A. Ernest and Jane G. Stein Professor of Neurology, the director of the Division of Pediatric and Developmental Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis, and the chief of Neurology at St. Louis Children's Hospital.

#2922

Irini Sereti

#118575

Overall Influence

Irini Sereti is a Greek scientist and physician. She is chief of the HIV pathogenesis section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Sereti researches immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome, idiopathic CD4 lymphocytopenia, and immune-based therapeutic strategies of HIV investigation.

#2923

Anna Molofsky

#172595

Overall Influence

Anna V. Molofsky is an American psychiatrist and glial biologist. She is an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at UC San Francisco. Her lab currently studies the communication between astrocytes, microglia, and neurons to understand how these signals regulate synaptic development in health and disease.

#2924

Carrie L. Partch

#169221

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Carrie L. Partch is an American protein biochemist and circadian biologist. Partch is currently a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is noted for her work using biochemical and biophysical techniques to study the mechanisms of circadian rhythmicity across multiple organisms. Partch applies principles of chemistry and physics to further her research in the field of biological clocks.

#2925

Rebecca Katz

#65744

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Rebecca Katz is a professor and director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center. She is an expert in global health and international diplomacy, specializing in emerging infectious diseases. From 2004 to 2019, she was a consultant for the United States Department of State on matters related to the Biological Weapons Convention and emerging infectious disease threats. Katz served on the Joe Biden presidential campaign's public health panel to advise on the COVID-19 pandemic.

#2926

Fiona Cross

#154069

Overall Influence

Fiona Ruth Cross is a New Zealand arachnologist. She did both her MSc and PhD theses at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Cross is best known for detecting food preference in East African Evarcha culicivora spiders for female Anopheles mosquitos fed recently on mammalian blood.

#2927

Luanne Metz

#149662

Overall Influence

Luanne Metz is a Canadian politician and clinical neurologist and researcher. She was elected member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta for Calgary-Varsity in the 2023 Alberta general election. She is known for her work in the field of multiple sclerosis and has been recognized globally as an expert in the field.

#2928

Meera Chand

#137147

Overall Influence

Meera A. Chand is a British microbiologist, working at Public Health England and as a consultant with the Department of Infectious Diseases, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. She is also a clinical research fellow into severe acute respiratory infections at Imperial College London.

#2929

Sarah Rugheimer

#125542

Overall Influence

Sarah Rugheimer is a Swiss-American astrobiologist and astrophysicist at Jesus College, Oxford. Her research focuses on the atmospheric composition of exoplanets, and ways of detecting life. Education Rugheimer earned her bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Calgary. She completed her master's degree and PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Harvard University. Her thesis topic involved studying biomarkers and modelling the atmosphere of exoplanets, using space-based telescopes.

#2930

Ann Elizabeth Sefton

#177743

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Ann Elizabeth Jervie Sefton AO is an Australian neurologist and educator. As a visual scientist, she developed descriptions of the connections between the eye and visual centres of the brain. As a student at the University of Sydney she was the first woman to be elected President of the Medical Society. In 2000, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for her services to medical education. She was appointed Pro-Chancellor of the University of Sydney in 2001 and served as Deputy Chancellor from 2004 to 2008.

#2931

Ute Müller-Doblies

#174726

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Ute Müller-Doblies is a German botanist with an interest in the systematics of Amaryllidaceae. She is currently at the Herbarium of the Technische Universität Berlin in collaboration with Dietrich Müller-Doblies .

#2932

Catherina Becker

#171913

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Catherina Gwynne Becker is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor at TU Dresden, and was formerly Professor of Neural Development and Regeneration at the University of Edinburgh. Early life and education Catherina Becker was born in Marburg, Germany in 1964. She was educated at the in Bremen, before going on to study at the University of Bremen where she obtained an MSci of Biology and her PhD in 1993, investigating visual system development and regeneration in frogs and salamanders under the supervision of Gerhard Roth. She then trained as post-doctorate at the Swiss Federal Institute of Tech...

#2933

Geeta Narlikar

#135609

Overall Influence

Geeta J. Narlikar is an Indian–American biochemist who is Professor and the Lewis and Ruth Cozen Chair at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research considers epigenetic regulation and genome organisation. She was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

#2934

Susannah M. Porter

#144187

Overall Influence

Susannah M. Porter is an American paleontologist and geobiologist who studies the early evolution of eukaryotes, the early Cambrian fossil record of animals, and the evolution of skeletal biomineralization. She is currently a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Porter is a Fellow of the Paleontological Society. She has received national recognition awards from the Geological Society of America.

#2935

Catherine S. Woolley

#172149

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Catherine S. Woolley is an American neuroendocrinologist. Woolley holds the William Deering Chair in Biological Sciences in the Department of Neurobiology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, at Northwestern University. She is also a member of the Women's Health Research Institute in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.

#2936

Suzanne Duigan

#174010

Overall Influence

1924 - 1993 (69 years)

Suzanne Lawless Duigan was an Australian paleobotanist who specialised in fossil pollen . She collaborated with fellow botanist Isabel Cookson extensively on Paleogene brown coal deposits in Victoria. She pioneered studies in south east Australian coal measures as she considered micro- and macrofossils of the region in terms of their relationships to living plant species and families and their ecologies.

#2937

Sarah E. Gergel

#177653

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Sarah E. Gergel is an American ecologist and professor in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia , Canada. She is a landscape ecologist, known for her research linking landscapes and rivers, and her role in enhancing training in the practice of landscape ecology.

#2938

Marta Tufet

#79270

Overall Influence

Marta Tufet Bayona is a British and Spanish biologist and public health resource coordinator with a specialty in malaria. She is executive director of the UK Collaborative on Development Research. Early life and education Tufet is from the United Kingdom. She is half Ecuadorian.

#2939

Darlene R. Ketten

#165347

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Darlene R. Ketten is an American Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She is best known for her work on marine mammal science, the biomechanics of hearing, and hearing loss.

#2940

Helen Marshall

#105816

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Helen Siobhan Marshall is an Australian medical researcher who is Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Adelaide. She was named the South Australian of the Year for 2022. Early life and education Marshall's mother was a nurse and her father a general practitioner. She completed her schooling at Pembroke School, Adelaide in 1979.

#2941

Dora Biro

#173634

Overall Influence

Dora Biro is a behavioral biologist and the Beverly Petterson Bishop and Charles W. Bishop Professor, Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester. She was previously a Professor of Animal Behaviour at the University of Oxford. and a visiting professor in the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University in Japan. Biro studies social behavior, problem solving, and learning in birds and primates.

#2942

Camilla Speller

Camilla Speller

#120592

Overall Influence

Camilla F. Speller is a biomolecular archaeologist, Assistant Professor in Anthropological Archaeology at the University of British Columbia Department of Anthropology. Education Speller obtained her BA from the University of Calgary with a double major in archaeology and biological anthropology. She completed her MA at Simon Fraser University in 2005, using aDNA analysis to examine the distribution of salmon species at the Northwest Plateau site of Keatley Creek in British Columbia Canada. She completed her PhD, completed at Simon Fraser in 2009 with a dissertation that applied ancient DNA te...

#2943

Gladys Elizabeth Baker

#101716

Overall Influence

1908 - 2007 (99 years)

Gladys Elizabeth Baker was an American mycologist, teacher, and botanical illustrator, known for her extensive work in biological and mycological education, and the morphological study of myxomycete fructifications . She further contributed studies to the Island Ecosystems Integrated Research Program of the U. S. International Biological Program .

#2944

Cardy Raper

#133114

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Carlene Allen "Cardy" Raper was an American mycologist and science writer. She identified that the fungus Schizophyllum commune has over 23,000 mating types. She is regarded as one of the first women taxonomists in mycology. She was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#2945

Cécile Charrier

#170708

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (41 years)

Cécile Charrier is a French neuroscientist research fellow at Inserm, the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale , at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Institute of Biology. She received the Irène Joliot-Curie "Young Female Scientist of the Year" award in 2021 for her work.

#2946

Joyce E. Longcore

#177688

Overall Influence

Joyce E. Longcore is a mycologist and an associate research professor at the University of Maine. She is most well known for first culturing and describing Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis which is a species of Chytridiomycota fungi that was the first to be known to attack vertebrates. She continues to collect and isolate Chytridiomycota cultures for other researches to use for their own studies.

#2947

Leena Hämet-Ahti

#173679

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Leena Hämet-Ahti is a Finnish botanist, plant taxonomist, and plant collector noted for being Associate Professor of Botany at the University of Helsinki, and later the Director of the university's Botanical Garden. She primarily studies alpine plants of Finland and similar northern hemisphere climates. Her PhD thesis, defended in 1963, was on mountain birch forests. She participated in the production of the seminal Finnish floras Retkeilykasvio and Suomen puu- ja pensaskasvio .

#2948

Joan B. Broderick

#174415

Overall Influence

Joan Blanchette Broderick is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Montana State University known for her work on bioinorganic chemistry, especially the chemistry of iron-sulfur interactions. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.

#2949

Adeyinka Gladys Falusi

#135374

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Adeyinka Gladys Falusi, NPOM, is a Nigerian Professor of haematology and former Director of the Institute for Advanced Medical Research and Training, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan. She specializes in human genetics, bioethics and molecular genetics related to hereditary blood diseases such as sickle-cell disease and alpha-thalassemia.

#2950

Sarah Bekessy

#176536

Overall Influence

Sarah Bekessy is an Australian interdisciplinary conservation scientist with a background in conservation biology and experience in social sciences, planning, and design. Her research interests focus on the intersection between science, policy, and the design of environmental management. She is currently a professor and ARC Future Fellow at RMIT University in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. She leads the Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group .

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