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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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#2951

T. Jane Zelikova

#173787

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Tamara Jane Zelikova is a climate change scientist, advocate and communicator interested in the impacts of environmental change on natural and managed ecosystems. Her interests are broad and include tropical biogeochemistry, as well as the effects of climate change on organisms big and small. She combines a strong emphasis on research with an interest in science communication and outreach, thinking about ways to expand the role of science in tackling global issues.

#2952

Beverly M. Emerson

#131444

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Beverly M. Emerson is an Emeritus Professor of Biological Sciences at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies who uncovered details about how cancer becomes drug resistant. She is currently at the Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#2953

Tanja Schuster

#140646

Overall Influence

Tanja Magdalena Schuster is a taxonomist from Austria, and the first Pauline Ladiges Plant Systematics Fellow, holding a joint position with the School of Biosciences, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and the National Herbarium of Victoria, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. Schuster also worked as curator of the Norton-Brown Herbarium at the University of Maryland, College Park.

#2954

Erika Marín-Spiotta

Erika Marín-Spiotta

#143419

Overall Influence

Erika Marín-Spiotta is a biogeochemist and ecosystem ecologist. She is currently Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is best-known for her research of the terrestrial carbon cycle and is an advocate for underrepresented groups in the sciences, specifically women.

#2955

Mary Freeman

#176767

Overall Influence

1924 - 2018 (94 years)

Mary Freeman , known professionally by her maiden name of Mary Whitear, was an English marine biologist and lecturer at University College London from 1947 to 1989. She was known for her attempts to determine the skin colour of extinct animals such as the ichthyosaur and her meticulous drawings of fossils. Her husband was the zoologist Richard Broke Freeman. In retirement she took up the local history of Tavistock, Devon.

#2956

Tuajuanda C. Jordan

Tuajuanda C. Jordan

#74799

Overall Influence

Tuajuanda C. Jordan has served as the seventh president of St. Mary’s College of Maryland since July 1, 2014. From 2006 to 2011, Jordan served as director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science Education Alliance program, where she launched the SEA-PHAGES program. This program has been implemented at more than 100 institutions and resulted in numerous scientific and pedagogical publications. Prior to joining St. Mary’s College, Jordan also held a number of leadership positions in higher education, including dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of chemistry at Lewi...

#2957

Mary Edmonds

#171270

Overall Influence

1922 - 2005 (83 years)

Mary P. Edmonds was an American biochemist who made key discoveries regarding the processing of messenger RNA . She spent most of her career at the University of Pittsburgh. Education and career Edmonds was born May 7, 1922, in Racine, Wisconsin. She received a bachelor's degree from Milwaukee-Downer College in 1943, a master's degree from Wellesley College in 1945, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951. Following her Ph.D., she was a postdoctoral researcher at University of Illinois and University of Wisconsin , and then joined Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburg as a research associate from 1955 until 1965.

#2958

Patricia DeLeon

#98086

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Patricia Anastastia Martin DeLeon is a Jamaican reproductive geneticist who is specialists in the male reproductive system. She is the Trustees Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Delaware. In 2010 she was awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring by Barack Obama.

#2959

Betty Collette

#132230

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Betty Elaine Collette was a veterinary pathologist from Asheville, North Carolina. She attended Stephens-Lee High School, earned her bachelor's degree in biology from Morgan State University, and her Ph.D. in bacteriology from Catholic University of America.

#2960

Michelle Hampson

#126548

Overall Influence

Michelle Hampson is an American neuroscientist who is an Associate Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at Yale University. She serves as director of real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging.

#2961

Jean Schwarzbauer

#95370

Overall Influence

Jean E. Schwarzbauer is an American molecular biologist currently the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. A cited expert in her field, Schwarzbauer's interests are kidney fibrosis, tissue regeneration and repair, cartilage development and tumor formations.

#2962

Margrét Guðnadóttir

Margrét Guðnadóttir

#173968

Overall Influence

1929 - 2018 (89 years)

Margrét Guðmunda Guðnadóttir was an Icelandic doctor and virologist and the first woman to become a professor at the University of Iceland. Career Margrét completed her matriculation examination from the mathematics department at Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík in the spring of 1949. In the autumn, she enrolled as a medical student at the University of Iceland and graduated in the spring of 1956. During the summers of 1954 and 1955, she worked at the Keldur Institute for Experimental Pathology, researching pneumonia and the spread of the influenza epidemic. After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine in the spring of 1956, she worked for one year at Keldur.

#2963

Christine Drea

#161952

Overall Influence

Christine M. Drea is a researcher and professor of biology and ecology with a specialty in animal social behavior and sexual differentiation at Duke University, both primarily on hyenas and primates. Drea's work is focused on female dominant species and the hormonal activity, reproductive development, and social interactions of these animals. She is currently the Earl D. McLean Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology within the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences and the director of graduate studies for the Duke University Ecology program.

#2964

Elham Emami

#118832

Overall Influence

Elham Emami is an Iranian-Canadian clinician scientist. She is the dean of McGill University Dental Medicine and Oral Health Sciences. Born and raised in Iran, Emami moved to Canada in 2002 to pursue her PhD and MSc at the Université de Montréal.

#2965

Harriet MacMillan

#100843

Overall Influence

Harriet Louise MacMillan is a Canadian pediatrician, psychiatrist, and scientist. As a Distinguished University Professor at McMaster University, she was also elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

#2966

Irina Levshakova

#101555

Overall Influence

1959 - 2016 (57 years)

Irina Yuryevna Levshakova was a Russian paleontologist, geologist, artist and musician. She is most famous for her deep involvement in the underground rock music scene in Leningrad during the 1980s and 1990s.

#2967

Cynthia Sharma

#162899

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Cynthia Mira Sharma is a biologist, who is Chair of Molecular Infection Biology II at the University of Würzburg. Her research focuses on how bacterial pathogens regulate their gene expression to adapt to changing environments or stress conditions. She was awarded a European Research Council Consolidator Grant in 2022.

#2968

Emma Allen-Vercoe

#178346

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Emma Allen-Vercoe is a British-Canadian Molecular biologist who is a Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Guelph. Her research considers the gut microbiome and microbial therapeutics to treat Escherichia coli.

#2969

Barbara Heslop

#137047

Overall Influence

1925 - 2013 (88 years)

Barbara Farnsworth Heslop was a New Zealand immunologist specialising in transplantation immunology and immunogenetics. Biography Born in Auckland, Heslop was educated at Epsom Girls' Grammar School from 1938 to 1941 and then attended the University of Otago, graduating MB ChB in 1949 and MD in 1954.

#2970

Cecilie Mauritzen

Cecilie Mauritzen

#77543

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Cecilie Mauritzen is a Norwegian physical oceanographer who studies connections between ocean currents and climate change. Education and career Mauritzen works as a researcher in the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. She graduated from the University of Bergen in 1987, and earned a PhD in 1994 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After working for NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center and for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, she joined the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in 2002, and eventually became director of the climate division there. She was also the director of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research from 2012 to 2013.

#2971

Jeanette Davis

#172942

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (39 years)

Jeanette Davis is a marine microbiologist, Policy Analyst for NOAA and children's book author. Early life and education Jeanette Davis was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1985. Davis discovered her passion for science at an early age. Unlike her siblings, who preferred video games and athletics, Davis loved spending time outside and experimenting. Her parents and school teachers encouraged her natural curiosity and inquisitiveness. By the time she got to high school, she knew that she wanted to pursue science and applied to colleges as pre-med as well as pre-law. However, when she began under...

#2972

Shuping Wang

#45752

Overall Influence

1959 - 2019 (60 years)

Shuping Wang was a Chinese-American medical researcher and public health whistleblower. She exposed the poor practices that led to the spread of hepatitis C and HIV in central China in the 1990s, potentially saving tens of thousands of lives. In 2001, following harassment by Chinese officials, she moved to the United States, where she worked until her death.

#2973

Anita Studer

#114048

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Anita Studer is a Swiss-born accountant, ornithologist, conservationist and ecologist. Ever since 1980, Anita has been actively engaged in saving a forest in northeastern Brazil. She was born in Brienz; at the age of 12, she moved with her family to Geneva. She first visited Brazil in 1976 to observe its rich variety of birds. On her return, she pursued a master's degree in ornithology at Nancy-Université. Five years later, in Brazil, she first saw a rare blackbird Forbes's blackbird , known locally as "anumará", in the Pedra Talhada forest in the state of Alagoas. Her academic supervisor to...

#2974

Jemma Geoghegan

#133732

Overall Influence

Jemma Louise Geoghegan is a Scottish-born evolutionary virologist, based at the University of Otago, New Zealand, who specialises in researching emerging infectious diseases and the use of metagenomics to trace the evolution of viruses. As a leader in several government-funded research projects, Geoghegan became the public face of genomic sequencing during New Zealand's response to COVID-19. Her research has contributed to the discussion about the likely cause of COVID-19 and the challenges around predicting pandemics. She was a recipient of the Young Tall Poppy Award in 2017, a Rutherford Di...

#2975

Nicole Gerardo

#179499

Overall Influence

Nicole M. Gerardo is an entomologist and Professor of Biology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2021, she became editor of the Annual Review of Entomology. Early life and education Gerardo earned a B.A. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Rice University in Houston, Texas in 1997. She received her Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas in 2004.

#2976

Jennifer Juengel

#178984

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Jennifer Lee Juengel is an animal health researcher in New Zealand. She has been a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi since 2016. Early life and education Juengel grew up in Michigan, and attended Michigan State University. Juengel earned a PhD from the University of Missouri in 1992, with a thesis titled Mechanisms of luteal regression in cattle after which she completed a postdoctoral research post at Colorado State University.

#2977

Nilay Yapici

#176900

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Nilay Yapici is a Turkish neuroscientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she is the Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences and Adelson Sesquicentennial Fellow in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. Yapici studies the neural circuits underlying decision making and feeding behavior in fruit fly models.

#2978

Mabel Hokin

#171239

Overall Influence

1924 - 2003 (79 years)

Mabel Ruth Hokin was a biochemist who spent most of her professional career conducting fundamental research in the University of Wisconsin Medical School. She is most well known for the work she did early in her career, along with then-husband Lowell Hokin, in the study of stimulated phosphoinositide turnover in secretory tissues, a key component of transmembrane signaling and many other cell regulatory processes which became known as the 'PI Effect'.

#2979

Susan Shaw

#50646

Overall Influence

1943 - 2022 (79 years)

Susan D. Shaw was an American environmental health scientist, marine toxicologist, explorer, ocean conservationist, and author. A Doctor of Public Health, she was a professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the School of Public Health at the State University of New York at Albany, and Founder/President of the Shaw Institute, a nonprofit scientific institution with a mission to improve human and ecological health through innovative science and strategic partnerships. Shaw is globally recognized for pioneering high-impact environmental research on ocean pollution, climate change, oil spills, and plastics that has fueled public policy over three decades.

#2980

Kathleen Anne Kron

#175476

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Kathleen Anne Kron is a retired biology professor from Wake Forest University. She is known for her research on Ericaceae, a family of flowering plants. Education Kron received her bachelor's degree and her master's degree from Michigan State University in 1979 and 1982 respectively. She received her doctorate from the University of Florida in 1987. In 2020, she retired as full professor from Wake Forest University.

#2981

Joana Palha

#176252

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Joana Palha is a neuroscientist and professor at the School of Health Sciences of the University of Minho, in Braga in the north of Portugal. Training Between 1988 and 1991, Joana Almeida Palha took an undergraduate degree in biochemistry at the University of Porto. This was followed by a PhD from the Abel Salazar Biomedical Sciences Institute of the University of Porto between 1992 and 1995, with the work being carried out at Columbia University in New York City. Between 2014 and 2016 she took a master's in public health at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

#2982

Giovanna Tinetti

Giovanna Tinetti

#85775

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Giovanna Tinetti is an Italian physicist based in London. She is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at University College London, who researches galactic planetary science, exoplanets and atmospheric science.

#2983

Caroline A. E. Strömberg

#179649

Overall Influence

Caroline A. E. Strömberg is a Swedish-American paleontologist whose primary research focuses on the deep time evolution and ecology of plants through the use of the fossil record and by comparison with modern analogues, more specifically how previous plant communities changed in response to climate change and how plant evolution affected animal evolution. She is currently the Estella B. Leopold Professor of Biology and an adjunct associate professor in Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington and the Curator of Paleobotany at the affiliated Burke Museum of Natural History and C...

#2984

Justine Shaw

#88085

Overall Influence

Justine Shaw is an Australian Antarctic researcher, best known for her conservation work on subantarctic islands, currently working at the Queensland University of Technology. She has a wide global research network, having worked in Australia, South Africa, sub-Antarctic/Antarctic and the Arctic.

#2985

Brenda Shore

#174006

Overall Influence

1922 - 1993 (71 years)

Brenda Faulkner Shore was a New Zealand botanist who attained the rank of Associate Professor before she retired in 1983. Early life and education Shore was born in Auckland on 30 November 1922 to parents the Reverend Dr William Slade and Mary Eizabeth Wilhemina Slade née Faulkner. She attended primary school in Napier, and was at school when the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake hit, and watched the school's buildings collapse. Shore attended Wellington East Girls' College from 1936–1938, and then Epsom Girls' Grammar School from 1938–1940. In 1940, Shore was awarded the Cheeseman Memorial Prize, ...

#2986

Ann E. Kelley

#125984

Overall Influence

1954 - 2007 (53 years)

Ann Elizabeth Kelley was an American neuroscientist, who specialized in the neuroscience of reward and behavior. She was a professor at the University of Wisconsin. Biography Kelley was born in Milton, Massachusetts. She became interested in neuroscience during a field trip to Harvard. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was captain for both the field hockey and lacrosse teams. She then received a Thouron fellowship which allowed her to pursue a PhD at the University of Cambridge, England, under the supervision of Susan Iversen. She was among the first 13 women to be admitted to Trinity College in 1976.

#2987

Mimi R. Koehl

#178328

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Mimi A. R. Koehl is an American marine biologist, biomechanist, and professor at University of California, Berkeley, and head of the Koehl Lab. She was a MacArthur Fellow in 1990. Education M. A. R. Koehl graduated from Gettysburg College magna cum laude, with a B.A. in biology, and Duke University with a Ph.D. in zoology, where she studied with Stephen A. Wainwright. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington, where she studied with Richard R. Strathmann, and at University of York, where she studied with John Currey.

#2988

Molly F. Mare

#168000

Overall Influence

1914 - 1997 (83 years)

Mary Florence "Molly" Mare , married name Spooner, was a British marine biologist who introduced the term meiobenthos in 1942. She was also an internationally recognized expert on oil spills. Significant research Mare's study of marine food cycle in sea mud led her to introduce the new term meiobenthos to join the terminology of macrobenthos and microbenthos. This has to allow improved understanding of marine organisms involved in these cycles through clearer reference to groupings by size. The importance of this approach is shown by the continuous reference to her work by other marine biolog...

#2989

Jannie Borst

#177342

Overall Influence

Jannie G. Keyser-Borst is a Dutch cancer immunologist. She became Professor at Leiden University on 16 January 2019 At the Leiden University Medical Center she currently runs a research group investigating the regulation of the T cell response

#2990

Hrefna Sigurjónsdóttir

Hrefna Sigurjónsdóttir

#174603

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Hrefna Sigurjónsdóttir is a biologist and a professor at the University of Iceland. Professional career Hrefna completed the national standard lower secondary school examination from Kvennaskólinn í Reykjavík in 1966 and a matriculation examination from the Mathematics Department of Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík in the spring of 1970. She graduated from the University of Iceland with a BS in biology in the spring of 1973. Her final project was on the ecology of insects. A year later, she finished a graduate program from the same department , emphasising insects and other land arthropods. She investigated their abundance and distribution on the south side and top of Mt.

#2991

Susan Ackerman

#172580

Overall Influence

Susan L. Ackerman is an American neuroscientist and geneticist. Her work has highlighted some of the genetic and biochemical factors that are involved in the development of the central nervous system and age-related neurodegeneration. Her research is aimed at helping scientists understand what causes several types of neurodegeneration in mammals. This research, and others' like it, may lead to cures for neurodegenerative diseases. Ackerman is a professor at University of California San Diego. She was formerly a professor at the Jackson Laboratory and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University.

#2992

Ma-Li Wong

#174482

Overall Influence

Ma-Li Wong is an Australian researcher in the fields of psychiatry and pharmacogenomics, with a particular focus on major depression. She is head of the Pharmacogenomics Research Program in the Mind and Brain Theme at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, as well as Strategic Professor of Psychiatry at Flinders University.

#2993

Lynne Opperman

#177641

Overall Influence

Lynne A. Opperman is an American researcher. Prior to the start of the 2021–22 academic year, Opperman was named interim dean of the Texas A&M University College of Dentistry. Early life and education Opperman was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. She attended the University of the Witwatersrand for her Bachelor of Science degree and Ph.D. before moving to the United States for her postdoctoral fellowships.

#2994

Celine Frere

#178914

Overall Influence

Celine Frere is a Swiss evolutionary biologist. In 2017, she was named one of Australia's first "Superstars of STEM" by Science & Technology Australia. She is known for co-founding USC's Detection Dogs for Conservation initiative, training sniffer dogs to aid in research and conversation efforts around endangered and protected species.

#2995

Kate Sanders

#135432

Overall Influence

Kate Laura Sanders is a researcher at the University of Adelaide, specialising in the study of sea snakes. She received a PhD from Bangor University in 2003 and was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow . Sanders has undertaken field work that has resulted in the identification of new species, including the sea snake Aipysurus mosaicus.

#2996

Maria do Carmo Estanislau do Amaral

#177550

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Maria do Carmo Estanislau do Amaral is a Brazilian botanist, biologist, curator, and academic., who has worked, since 2011, on teaching and research in the Department of Biology, Universidad Estatal de Campinas.

#2997

Joanna Groom

#178966

Overall Influence

Dr. Joanna Groom is an Australian Immunologist and Laboratory Head in the Immunology Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and WEHI CSL Centenary fellow. Her research focuses on how the communication and positioning of immune cells influences the immune response using 3D imaging methods with transcriptional analysis.

#2998

Liza Makowski Hayes

#136850

Overall Influence

Liza Makowski Hayes is an American nutritional biochemist. As a professor at the University of Tennessee, her research focuses on how metabolic stress and inflammation alters the progression of diseases, specifically obesity and cancer.

#2999

Sonia Garel

#177141

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Sonia Garel is a French neurobiologist, professor at the Collège de France and head of a research team at the Institut de biologie de l'Ecole normale supérieure in Paris. Early life and education Garel was born in Paris. She studied engineering at the AgroParisTech as an undergraduate. She moved to the Paris-Sorbonne University for graduate research, where she specialised in molecular and cellular neurobiology. Her doctoral research considered developmental biology. She moved to the University of California, San Francisco as a postdoctoral researcher with John Rubenstein. In 2003, she returne...

#3000

Uraina Clark

#132344

Overall Influence

Uraina Simone Clark is an American neuroscientist and Director of the Neuropsychology and Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research makes use of functional magnetic resonance imaging to understand how stressors impact brain and behaviour. She has studied the impact of discrimination on brain function, and shown that social discrimination results in an increase in amygdala function.

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