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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#3001

Catherine Chesla

#118525

Overall Influence

Catherine "Kit" Ann Chesla is an American nurse who is Professor Emeritus and former Thelma Shobe Endowed Chair at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. Her research has considered families and chronic illness.

#3002

Paula Cohen

#178933

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Paula Elaine Cohen is a British-American geneticist who is a professor and Associate Vice Provost for Life Sciences at Cornell University. Her research considers DNA repair mechanisms and the regulation of crossing over during mammalian meiosis. She was awarded the National Down Syndrome Society Charles J. Epstein Down Syndrome Research Award in 2004 and elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021.

#3003

Elizabeth Tasker

#122307

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Elizabeth Mary Tasker is an Australian fire ecologist. She obtained a PhD in Science at the University of Sydney in 2002. She is a researcher at the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, and previously worked for the University of Wollongong and for The Australian Museum carrying out biological surveys in Melanesia. Her main area of expertise is the effects of fire and fire management on native animals and plants. She was a Vice-President, and subsequently Director, of the Ecological Society of Australia, the largest professional association of scientists in Australia, and a published wildl...

#3004

Maria Bitner-Glindzicz

#173996

Overall Influence

1963 - 2018 (55 years)

Maria Bitner-Glindzicz was a British medical doctor, honorary consultant in clinical genetics at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and a professor of human and molecular genetics at the UCL Institute of Child Health. The hospital described her work as relating to the "genetic causes of deafness in children and therapies that she hoped would one day restore vision." She researched Norrie disease and Usher syndrome, working with charities including Sparks and the Norrie Disease Foundation, and was one of the first colleagues involved in the 100,000 Genomes Project at Genomics England.

#3005

Gertrudis de la Fuente

#140804

Overall Influence

1921 - 2017 (96 years)

Gertrudis de la Fuente Sánchez was a Spanish biochemist who specialised in enzymology. She was a professor in the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid. She coordinated the Spanish government's commission to protect against the 1981 toxic oil syndrome. Her life and scientific career was partially chronicled in the short film, Gertrudis , which was released in 2016.

#3006

Liza Comita

#178379

Overall Influence

Liza Sheera Comita is an American ecologist and Professor of Tropical Forest Ecology in the School of the Environment at Yale University. Her research focuses on tropical tree species ecology and how spatial and temporal variation in early life-stages affects abundance and diversity of species in tropical forests.

#3007

Marta Bunster

#175494

Overall Influence

Marta Cecilia del Carmen Bunster Balocchi is a Chilean scientist, most noted for her work in the fields of biochemistry, biophysics and crystallography. She is also known as one of the main promoters of bioinformatics in her country.

#3008

Florence Signaigo Wagner

#83490

Overall Influence

1919 - 2019 (100 years)

Florence Signaigo Wagner was an American botanist who served as president of the American Fern Society. Biography Florence Signaigo was born in Birmingham, Michigan, on February 18, 1919 and grew up in Highland Park. Her first botanical interest focused on red algae.

#3009

Crystal Mackall

Crystal Mackall

#60369

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Crystal L. Mackall is an American physician and immunologist. She is currently the Ernest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Stanford University. She is the founding director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy.

#3010

Brooke E. Flammang

#175684

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Brooke E. Flammang is an American biologist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She specializes in functional morphology, biomechanics, and bioinspired technology of fishes. Flammang is a discoverer of the radialis muscle in shark tails. She also studies the adhesive disc of the remora, and the walking cavefish, Cryptotora thamicola. Her work has been profiled by major news outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, BBC Radio 5, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic Wild. She was named one of the "best shark scientists to follow" by Scientific American in 20...

#3011

Erin Hotchkiss

#175577

Overall Influence

Erin Hotchkiss is an ecologist who studies climate change's specific impact on freshwater ecosystems . She researches the relationships between organisms and water quality in freshwater ecosystems, how processes on land influence water, and the sources and fate of carbon and nutrients in aquatic ecosystems. Hotchkiss is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

#3012

Yinling Hu

#96780

Overall Influence

Yinling Hu is a Chinese molecular biologist specialized in cancer immunometabolism, inflammation, and tumorigenesis. She is a senior investigator in the National Cancer Institute. She was an assistant professor at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

#3013

Sally Merry

#166623

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Sally Nicola Merry is a New Zealand child psychiatry academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland and holds the Cure Kids Duke Family Chair in Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

#3014

Jennifer Gommerman

#59545

Overall Influence

Jennifer Lynn Gommerman is a Canadian immunologist. She is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Tissue-Specific Immunity at the University of Toronto. Gommerman has been examining the role of B lymphocytes in Multiple Sclerosis patients and in animal models of MS. She also studies the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 in saliva samples from patients with COVID-19.

#3015

Karin Bryan

#179675

Overall Influence

Karin Roisin Bryan is a New Zealand oceanography academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Waikato. She is also the director of the Environmental Research Institute. Academic career After a 1997 PhD titled Bar-trapped edge waves at Dalhousie University, Bryan moved to the University of Waikato, rising to full professor.

#3016

Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka

Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka

#90130

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is a Ugandan veterinarian and founder of Conservation Through Public Health, an organisation dedicated to the coexistence of endangered mountain gorillas, other wildlife, humans, and livestock in Africa.

#3017

Katya Susana Romoleroux

#176326

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Katya Susana Romoleroux is an Ecuadorian botanist. In 2020, she was awarded the 29th Eugenio Espejo National Prize for her lifelong contribution to science in Ecuador. She was born in Quito in 1961. She did a fellowship in Tropical Biology at the University of Aarhus, and completed her PhD with funding from the Danish government. In 2002 she obtained a postdoctoral fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to conduct research at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. She has taught at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador for more than 20 years, where she is also cura...

#3018

Sherry Thornton

#166576

Overall Influence

Sherry L. Thornton is an American biologist. She is a field service associate professor at University of Cincinnati in the department of pediatrics. Thornton is the director of the Research Flow Cytometry Core.

#3019

Sally Le Page

#178610

Overall Influence

1990 - Present (36 years)

Sally Le Page is a British evolutionary biologist and science communicator. She is best known for making educational science content on YouTube, both for her own channel and for collaborations with groups such as General Electric and Rooster Teeth. She completed her PhD at the University of Oxford researching sexual selection.

#3020

Ruth Hall

#127761

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Ruth Milne Hall, OAM, FAA, FAAM is an Australian microbiologist whose research on mobile genetic elements in bacteria has provided deep insight into the transfer and evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

#3021

Kateryna Makova

#179697

Overall Influence

Kateryna D. Makova is an American biologist, currently the Francis R. and Helen M. Pentz professor of biology in the Eberly College of Science at Pennsylvania State University. She is also a published author, being widely cited by her peers and widely held in libraries.

#3022

Catherine Potenski

#179245

Overall Influence

Catherine J. Potenski is an American microbiologist and the former chief editor of Nature Genetics. Education Potenski obtained a PhD in microbiology from New York University Grossman School of Medicine for her research on Q/N-rich protein aggregates and prions in the yeast model system. At the university she worked in Irina Derkatch's laboratory.

#3023

Alison Stewart

#180118

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Alison Stewart is a New Zealand biologist who specialises in plant pathology. she is the CEO of the Foundation for Arable Research, based in Christchurch. Early life and education Stewart was born in Scotland in 1957. She completed a BSc majoring in botany in 1980 at the University of Glasgow and graduated from the University of Stirling in 1983 with a PhD in plant pathology.

#3024

Marion Bamford

#162628

Overall Influence

Marion Kathaleen Bamford is a Zimbabwean paleobotanist, and is a professor at University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Early life and education Marion was born in Zimbabwe. She received her PhD, MSc, and BSc at University of the Witwatersrand.

#3025

Sapna Sharma

#180955

Overall Influence

Sapna Sharma is a Canadian limnologist and associate professor of biology at York University. Sharma studies human-induced environmental stressors and holds the York University Research Chair in Global Change Biology. She obtained her PhD at the University of Toronto and held post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Montreal and the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

#3026

Susan E. Parks

#172095

Overall Influence

Susan Parks is an ecologist at Syracuse University known for her research on acoustic signaling and the impact of ambient noise on communication in marine mammals. Education and career Parks obtained a B.A. in Biology from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution . Following her time in Woods Hole, Parks was a postdoctoral investigator at Cornell University before joining the faculty at Pennsylvania State University. Parks is currently an associate professor of Biology at Syracuse Universi...

#3027

Fan Wang

#168114

Overall Influence

Fan Wang is a neuroscientist and professor in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. She is an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Wang is known for her work identifying neural circuits underlying touch, pain, and anesthesia; and the development of a technique for capturing activated neuronal ensembles to label and manipulate neurons activated by stimuli or behavioral paradigms.

#3028

Angelicque White

#179511

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Angelicque E. White is an American oceanographer. She is an associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology and director of the Hawaii Ocean Time-series program.

#3029

Alex James

#62859

Overall Influence

Alex James is a British and New Zealand applied mathematician and mathematical biologist whose research involves the mathematical modeling of wildlife behaviour, gender disparities in academia, and the epidemiology of COVID-19. She is a professor in the school of mathematics and statistics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and a researcher with the Te Pūnaha Matatini Centre of Research Excellence for Complex Systems, where she is Deputy Director for Industry and Stakeholder Engagement.

#3030

Beryl Brewin

#157537

Overall Influence

1910 - 1999 (89 years)

Beryl Iris Brewin was a New Zealand marine zoologist, specialising in ascidians . Academic career Brewin was born 10 September 1910 to parents Lucy and Frank Brewin. She graduated from Auckland University College in 1931 with a Bachelor of Science in botany and zoology. This was followed by an MSc in botany in 1933.

#3031

Silvia Bolland

#181042

Overall Influence

Silvia Bolland is an American biomedical scientist serving as chief of the autoimmunity and functional genomics section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. She earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Cantabria and received postdoctoral training at Harvard and Rockefeller University. Her areas of research include the identification of new genetic modifiers of systemic autoimmune disease, dose effect of Toll-like receptor genes and its role in autoimmune pathologies, and inhibitory signaling pathways mediated by the IgG Fc receptor and the phosphoin...

#3032

Clodagh O'Shea

#179200

Overall Influence

Clodagh C. O'Shea is a professor of molecular and cell biology and current Wicklow Chair at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences and a scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is also an Adjunct Professor at UCSD and the Scientific Founder of IconOVir Bio.

#3033

Cécile Mourer-Chauviré

Cécile Mourer-Chauviré

#86603

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Cécile Mourer-Chauviré is a French paleontologist specializing in birds of the Eocene and the Oligocene. In her early career, she discovered with her husband the Laang Spean cave site of prehistoric humans in Cambodia.

#3034

Kristen DeAngelis

#84846

Overall Influence

Kristen M. DeAngelis is a professor in the department of Microbiology at the University of Massachusetts where she studies soil microbes in relation to climate change. Early life and education DeAngelis is originally from Watertown, Massachusetts. She graduated from Harvard University within the Biology department in 1997. DeAngelis received her Ph. D. in Microbiology from the University of California Berkeley in 2006. She subsequently worked as a Seaborg Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkley National Lab and in the Deconstruction Division at the Joint BioEnergy Institute

#3035

Gillian Dianne Lewis

#181106

Overall Influence

Gillian Dianne Lewis is a New Zealand microbiologist. She is a full professor at the University of Auckland and on the board of Crown Research Institute NIWA. Academic career After a PhD from the University of Otago,"Enteric viruses in aquatic habitats", Lewis moved to the University of Auckland and rose to full professor.

#3036

María Dolores Soria Mayor

#175199

Overall Influence

1948 - 2004 (56 years)

María Dolores Soria Mayor , also known as Loli Soria, was a Spanish paleontologist. Biography María Dolores Soria Mayor earned a degree in Biological Sciences in 1971, and until 1973 she was a professor of Natural Sciences at the Corazón de María school in Ciudad Lineal. In 1973 and 1974 she studied and worked in Germany, and after her return she began her thesis on the canid Nyctereutes, found in the . At that time she also published about another species of that site, the rodent Blancomys neglectus.

#3037

Daniela Drummond-Barbosa

#180058

Overall Influence

Daniela Drummond-Barbosa is a Brazilian-American geneticist who is a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research considers stem cell regulation.

#3038

Jodi Rowley

#176280

Overall Influence

Jodi J. L. Rowley is an Australian herpetologist and conservationist. Life and research Rowley received her bachelor's degree in environmental science at University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and her PhD from James Cook University. Her doctoral thesis was on the topic of amphibian decline caused by chytridiomycosis. After finishing her PhD, in 2006 she moved to Cambodia to work for Conservation International as a wildlife biologist. She returned to Australia in 2008, and began working at the Australian Museum. In 2016, she was appointed curator of Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Biology at the Australian Museum.

#3039

Jacqueline Gottlieb

#181137

Overall Influence

Jacqueline Gottlieb is an American neuroscientist who is a professor of neuroscience and the Principal Investigator at the Columbia University Zuckerman Institute. Her research considers the mechanisms that underlie cognitive function.

#3040

Véronique Miron

#176947

Overall Influence

Véronique E. Miron is the John David Eaton Chair in Multiple Sclerosis Research at the Barlo MS Centre and Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science, Full Professor at the University of Toronto Department of Immunology, and Honorary Chair at the University of Edinburgh Dementia Research Institute.

#3041

Kathleen Campbell

#177859

Overall Influence

Kathleen Ann Campbell is an American-born New Zealand geology and astrobiology academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland. Her work is broadly centred in the topic of paleoecology and how ancient organisms interacted with their environment and whether they were capable of surviving under extremely hard conditions. Much of her research carries wide-ranged associations with questions about the origin of life and the possibility of life on Mars. She graduated from the University of Southern California and she is currently a full professor at the University of Auckla...

#3042

Elissa Cameron

#181238

Overall Influence

Elissa Zanna Cameron is a New Zealand wildlife biologist whose research includes animal behaviour, ecology and conservation biology. Academic career After graduating from Massey University with a PhD titled "Maternal investment in Kaimanawa horses" in 1999, Cameron moved to the University of Nevada, Reno from 2002 to 2006. She worked at the University of Pretoria from 2006 to 2010. She was promoted to full professor in November 2018 at the University of Canterbury.

#3043

Elspeth Smith

#177613

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

Elspeth Bruce Smith FRSE , née Dunkerley, was a British academic and biochemist. Smith was educated at Cambridge, London and Aberdeen. During World War II she was employed by the Ministry of Aircraft Production. Afterwards, she was a research assistant at Cambridge University and at St Bartholomew's Hospital.

#3044

Petra Ritter

#151840

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Petra Ritter is a German neuroscientist and medical doctor at Charité in Berlin. Her field is computational neuroscience and her focus is developing brain simulations for individual people with neurological conditions, combining EEG and neuroimaging data.

#3045

Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo

Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo

#137404

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo is a French researcher of evolutionary biology and genetics. She is a director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research and head of the Drosophila Evolution Team at the Institut Jacques Monod.

#3046

Tatiana Rynearson

#178941

Overall Influence

Tatiana Rynearson is an American oceanographer who is a professor at the University of Rhode Island. Her research considers plankton diversity and abundance. Rynearson has been on several research cruises, including trips to the North Sea, Puget Sound, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Atlantic.

#3047

Maja Krzic

#141563

Overall Influence

Maja Krzic is a soil scientist and an associate professor in the Department of Forest & Conservation Sciences in the Faculty of Forestry with a joint appointment in the Applied Biology and Soil Sciences programs in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. She is a founder of the Virtual Soil Science Learning Resources Group, a collaborative teaching effort among scientists, students, and multimedia experts from seven universities and three research institutions in Canada that create open access soil science educational resources. She is also the president of ...

#3048

Maria Falkenberg

#180589

Overall Influence

Maria Falkenberg is a professor of medical biochemistry at the Sahlgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has made important contributions to understanding how the mitochondrial genome is maintained in health and disease.

#3049

Elizabeth Kutter

#111109

Overall Influence

Dr. Elizabeth Kutter is a phage biologist based at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, USA, where she is a Professor Emeritus. She led the T4 Genome Sequencing project, and organized the biennial Evergreen International Phage Biology meetings that draw hundreds of phage researchers from all over the world.

#3050

Carola B. Eisenberg

Carola B. Eisenberg

#71789

Overall Influence

1923 - 2021 (98 years)

Carola Blitzman Eisenberg was an Argentine-American psychiatrist who became the first woman to hold the position of dean of students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1978 to 1990, she was the dean of student affairs at Harvard Medical School . She has for a long time been lecturer in the newly renamed Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at HMS . She was also both a founding member of Physicians for Human Rights and an honorary psychiatrist with the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, a longstanding position there.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions