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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Biology,

#3251

Marlene Cohen

#181564

Overall Influence

Marlene R. Cohen is a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh and an Associate Director of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, a joint venture between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Her team investigates how visual information is encoded in groups of neurons and used to guide behavior. She is recognized for pioneering use of multielectrode array recording to determine that the improved behavioral performance associated with redirecting spatial attention has a neural correlate in the brain that is reflected by reduced correlated activity between neurons.

#3252

Rachel Fewster

#177590

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Rachel M. Fewster is a British and New Zealand environmental statistician and statistical ecologist known for her work on wildlife population size, population genetics, and Benford's law, and for the development of the CatchIT citizen science project for monitoring invasive species. She is a professor of statistics in New Zealand at the University of Auckland.

#3253

Anna Sher

#183431

Overall Influence

Anna Amelia Sher is an American plant ecologist who is a professor at the University of Denver. She works on conservation and the restoration of areas invaded by Tamarix. She is the author of two textbooks, Ecology:Concepts and Applications and Introduction to conservation biology.

#3254

Monica Baskin

#73429

Overall Influence

Monica Baskin is an American psychologist who is a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research considers health disparities in the Deep South. She serves as Director of Community Outreach and Engagement at the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center.

#3255

June Jackson Christmas

#48514

Overall Influence

1924 - Present (102 years)

June Jackson Christmas is a psychiatrist, a former New York City Commissioner of Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services, member of President Jimmy Carter transition team, the beneficiary of Human-Services Award, the founder of a community psychiatric program in Harlem - Harlem Rehabilitation Center. Christmas served as a member of Governor Mario Cuomo's Advisory Committee on Black Affairs.

#3256

Elyn Saks

#5250

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Elyn R. Saks is associate dean and Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Gould Law School, an expert in mental health law, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship winner. Saks lives with schizophrenia and has written about her experience with the illness in her award-winning best-selling autobiography, The Center Cannot Hold, published by Hyperion Books in 2007. She is also a cancer survivor.

#3257

Karen Visick

#186032

Overall Influence

Karen Visick is an American microbiologist and expert in bacterial genetics known for her work on the role of bacteria to form biofilm communities during animal colonization. She conducted doctoral research with geneticist Kelly Hughes at the University of Washington, where she identified a key regulatory checkpoint during construction of the bacterial flagellum. She conducted postdoctoral research on development of the Vibrio fischeri-Euprymna scolopes symbiosis with Ned Ruby at University of Southern California and University of Hawaiʻi. The bacteria are bioluminescent and provide light to the host.

#3258

Nerea Irigoyen

#185201

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Nerea Irigoyen Vergara is a virologist specialized in Zika virus. She leads a research group at the Department of Pathology of Cambridge University, in the UK. Career and research Nerea Irigoyen studied Pharmacy at the University of Navarra, Spain, and carried out her PhD at CNB-CSIC in Madrid, Spain, under the supervision of José Francisco Rodríguez and José Ruiz Castón. During her predoctoral studies, she spent several months abroad in Trieste, Italy, and Cambridge, UK. After graduating, she moved to the University of Cambridge to work as a Sir Henry Wellcome postdoctoral researcher in Prof...

#3259

Neiva Maria Robaldo Guedes

#184923

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Neiva Maria Robaldo Guedes, or Neiva Guedes, is a Brazilian biologist and a specialist on environment and species conservation. In November 1989, Neiva came across a flock of hyacinth macaws in the Pantanal and, knowing that they were in danger of extinction, she began to work on cataloguing and conserving the species with her own means. Illegal capture for the pet bird trade, habitat destruction and feather collection for handicrafts were the main reasons for the drastic reduction in hyacinth macaw numbers.

#3260

Teresa Wang

#185187

Overall Influence

Teresa Shu-Fong Wang is an American biochemist. Teresa Shu-Fong Wang is an American biochemist. She is an emeritus Stanford University professor, and the K. Bensch Endowed Chair Professor in Experimental Pathology of Department of Pathology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Her scientific pursuit focuses on the biochemical mechanisms of chromosome replication proteins, and molecular mechanisms of their involvement in maintaining genome integrity during chromosome replication.

#3261

Lynn Raulerson

#178321

Overall Influence

1937 - 2012 (75 years)

Claire Lynn Raulerson was an American plant biologist who worked in Guam and specialised in the study of Micronesian plants, especially those of Guam and the other Mariana Islands. She held her position in biology at the University of Guam for over forty years.

#3262

Karen Miga

#123751

Overall Influence

Karen Elizabeth Hayden Miga is an American geneticist who co-leads the Telomere-to-Telomore consortium that released fully complete assembly of the human genome in March 2022. She is an assistant professor of biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Associate Director of Human Pangenomics at the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute. She was named as "One to Watch" in the 2020 Nature's 10 and one of Time 100’s most influential people of 2022.

#3263

Anne Spurkland

#186116

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Anne Spurkland is a Norwegian anatomist and immunologist. She finished the cand.med. degree at the University of Oslo in the autumn of 1986. In 1993 she delivered the doctoral thesis HLA Associated Genetic Susceptibility to Multiple Sclerosis and Coeliac disease, gaining the dr.med. degree.

#3264

Helen Lee

#94502

Overall Influence

Helen Lee is a Chinese-born, British–French medical researcher who won the European Inventor Award 2016 in the Popular Prize category for inventing diagnostic kits for resource-poor regions of the globe. She is the CEO of Diagnostics for the Real World. She has been based at the University of Cambridge since 1996.

#3265

Divya Nag

#173576

Overall Influence

1991 - Present (35 years)

Divya Nag is an American stem cell biologist, biotechnology entrepreneur, and a leader of Apple's Health and Research initiatives. At the age of 20, Nag co-founded Stem Cell Theranostics which uses patient-specific stem cells in a drug discovery platform. Nag is also the founder of StartX Med, Stanford University's healthcare accelerator program. At Apple, Nag leads a team designing tools that help ease communication between healthcare professionals, researchers, and patients to guide scientific innovation and improve health outcomes.

#3266

Hillary Maddin

#184183

Overall Influence

Hillary Catherine Maddin is a Canadian paleontologist and developmental biologist known for her work on development in extinct and extant amphibians. She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University.

#3267

Patricia Silveyra

#176742

Overall Influence

Patricia Silveyra is an Argentine-American lung physiologist and professor of Environmental Health at Indiana University School of Public Health. Her research interests include sex differences in innate immunity, lung disease, air pollution exposure effects, and mechanisms by which sex hormones control lung immunity.

#3268

Zanna Chase

#168342

Overall Influence

Zanna Chase is an ocean-going professor of chemical oceanography and paleoceanography at the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Science, University of Tasmania, Australia. She has undertaken over 20 voyages on research vessels, and her areas of expertise are Antarctic paleoclimate, marine carbon cycle, radionuclides in the ocean, sediment geochemistry, paleoceanography, and marine biogeochemistry. In 2013 she was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship.

#3269

Enikő Kubinyi

#176229

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Eniko Kubinyi is a Hungarian biologist who studies dog behaviour, cognition, ageing, and the relationship between dogs and humans. She completed her Ph.D. degree in animal behaviour from the Eotvos Lorand University, where she is the principal investigator of the Senior Family Dog Project and the Canine Brain and Tissue Bank.

#3270

Julie A. Johnson

#172153

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Julie Ann Johnson is an American clinical pharmacist and translational scientist. She currently serves as associate dean for clinical and translational research and holds the Dr. Samuel T. and Lois Felts Mercer Professorship of Medicine and Pharmacology at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. She is also be associate vice president for research at Ohio State. Johnson comes to Ohio State from the University of Florida, where she was dean emeritus of pharmacy and a distinguished professor of pharmacy and medicine in the Department of Pharmacotherapy & Translational Research. For four ...

#3271

Mavis Agbandje-McKenna

#110037

Overall Influence

1963 - 2021 (58 years)

Mavis Agbandje-McKenna was a Nigerian-born British medical biophysicist, structural virologist, and a professor of structural biology, as well as the director of the Center for Structural Biology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. Agbandje-McKenna studied parvovirus structures using X-ray crystallography and cryogenic electron microscopy and did much of the initial work to elucidate the basic structure and function of adeno-associated viruses . Her viral characterization and elucidation of antibody binding sites on AAV capsids has led to the development of viral capsid deve...

#3272

Kristin Carson-Chahhoud

#186071

Overall Influence

Kristin Carson-Chahhoud is an Associate Professor at the University of South Australia, heading a research group in the Adelaide Medical School. Specialising in respiratory medicine, tobacco control and management of tobacco-related illnesses, Carson aims to close the gap between clinical research trials and real-world patient care.

#3273

Vera Lúcia Gomes-Klein

#186324

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Dr. Vera Lúcia Gomes-Klein is a Brazilian botanist and professor at the Federal University of Goiás. She specializes in plant taxonomy, particularly floristics and the classification of spermatophytes. She is manager of the Federal University of Goiás' Conservation Unit, which consists of an herbarium, the August Forest of Saint Hilaire, and the Serra Dourada Biological Reserve. She has described at least five species of melonleaf in the genus Cayaponia.

#3274

Jane Green

#129870

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Professor Jane S. Green PhD, , Hon FCCMG, FCAHS is a Canadian medical geneticist. Life Green studied Zoology, obtaining a BSc in 1964, and Drosophila Genetics, obtaining an MSc in 1966, both from the University of British Columbia. She moved to Newfoundland in 1967.

#3275

Karen Stockin

#183342

Overall Influence

Karen Ann Stockin is a New Zealand academic marine ecologist, and as of 2021 is a full professor at Massey University. Her research focuses on animal welfare and the impacts of human activities on cetacean populations, including tourism effects, and persistent marine contaminants.

#3276

Claudia Sousa

#149776

Overall Influence

1975 - 2014 (39 years)

Cláudia Maria Azenha Margato de Ramalho Sousa was a primatologist. She was the first Portuguese to work in the field with chimpanzees. Sousa discovered that chimpanzees would exchange tokens for food

#3277

Lisa White

#150720

Overall Influence

Lisa D. White is an American geologist and director of Education and Outreach at the University of California Museum of Paleontology. White is a former professor of geosciences and associate dean of the College of Science and Engineering at San Francisco State University. She was elected to the California Academy of Sciences in 2000 and as a Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2009. White was awarded her PhD in 1989 from the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2022 the National Center for Science Education presented White with the 2022 "Friend of Darwin" award.

#3278

Folami Ideraabdullah

#182705

Overall Influence

Folami Ideraabdullah is an American geneticist and assistant professor in the Department of Genetics and the Department of Nutrition at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ideraabdullah explores how maternal nutrition and environmental toxin exposure affect development through exploring epigenetic changes to DNA. She has found that maternal Vitamin D deficiencies can cause genome-wide changes in methylation patterns that persist for several generations and impact offspring health. Her international collaboration with the University of...

#3279

Catharina Boehme

#173842

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Catharina Boehme is the Assistant Director-General for External Relations and Governance of the World Health Organization. She previously served as WHO Chef de Cabinet, and is known for her work in developing diagnostic tests for diseases such as tuberculosis and for advocating for increased testing for the COVID-19 disease.

#3280

Eva Konrad Hawkins

#88671

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

Eva Konrad Hawkins was a Hungarian-born American biologist and college professor. Early life Éva Konrád was raised in Berettyóújfalu, near Debrecen, Hungary, to Jewish parents József Konrád and Róza Klein. Her younger brother was writer György Konrád. The siblings lived in a safe house in Budapest during World War II; their parents survived the Strasshof concentration camp in Austria.

#3281

Margret Schleidt

Margret Schleidt

#177853

Overall Influence

1928 - 2012 (84 years)

Margret Else Schleidt was a German human ethologist. She worked at the Max-Planck-Institut für Verhaltensphysiologie, which has now become the Max-Planck Institute for Ornithology. Margret Else Schleidt studied Biology at the Universities of Bonn, Zurich and Freiburg. She did her dissertation research in animal ethology at Konrad Lorenz’s research station in Buldern Westfalen. She then completed her PhD in animal ethology in 1955 under the supervision of Professor Otto Koehler in Freiburg i Br., before working as part of Konrad Lorenz’ research group at the Max-Planck-Institut für Verhaltensphysiologie in Seewiesen.

#3282

Alison Buchan

#186485

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Alison Buchan is the Carolyn Fite Professor at the University of Tennessee. She is known for her work on bacteria in natural environments, especially bacteria within the Roseobacter group. In 2022 she was named as a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

#3283

Bianca Reinert

#176111

Overall Influence

1965 - 2018 (53 years)

Bianca Luiza Reinert was a Brazilian biologist and ornithologist. She was one of a group of ornithologists who discovered a previously undocumented species of swamp bird, Formicivora acutirostris. She also worked to create a nature reserve to preserve its habitat.

#3284

Colleen Mouw

#176241

Overall Influence

Colleen Beckmann Mouw is an associate professor at the University of Rhode Island known for her work on phytoplankton ecology and increasing retention of women in oceanography. Education and career Mouw received a B.S. from Western Michigan University in 2000, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island. Following her Ph.D. she was a postdoctoral investigator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, until she moved to Michigan Technological University in 2012. In 2016, she moved back to the University of Rhode Island.

#3285

Lü Zhi

#174919

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Lü Zhi is a Chinese conservation biologist, panda expert and an expert on biodiversity. She is a professor at Peking University and also the executive director of the Peking University Center for Nature and Society. Lü is also the founder of the Shanshui Conservation Center which is dedicated to preserving the Three Rivers Headwater Region in Yushu, Qinghai.

#3286

Joanne Lemieux

#186753

Overall Influence

M. Joanne Lemieux is a Canadian scientist who is a Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Alberta. She studies the structures of membrane proteins that are critical to disease in an effort to identify novel therapeutic strategies. During the COVID-19 pandemic Lemieux worked to develop an antiviral drug that could protect people from coronavirus disease.

#3287

Alisa Morss Clyne

#180947

Overall Influence

Alisa Morss Clyne is an American mechanobiologist. She is a Full Professor and Associate Chair of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Clyne is an expert in endothelial cell biology, biomechanics, and metabolomics.

#3288

Mirna Kvajo

#184704

Overall Influence

Mirna Kvajo was a Croatian scientist and the chief editor of the academic journal BMC Biology. She died on May 16, 2023, in New York. Education Kvajo has a bachelor's degree from the University of Zagreb and a Ph.D. from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research and the University of Basel.

#3289

Ikram Blilou

#186521

Overall Influence

Ikram Blilou is a Moroccan biologist who is a professor of plant sciences at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Her research investigates how plants develop resistance to extreme conditions of drought and salinity.

#3290

Anitra Ingalls

#186770

Overall Influence

Anitra Eiding Ingalls is an American biogeochemist and oceanographer. In 2017, she was named an American Geophysical Union Outstanding Reviewer. Life She graduated from Reed College and from Stony Brook University. She was a post-doctoral fellow at Pearson Lab. She was a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. She teaches at University of Washington. She attended Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia. She did research at the Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology.

#3291

Carol Blanchette

#186714

Overall Influence

Carol Anne Blanchette is research biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara who is known for her work on marine intertidal zones and the biomechanics of marine organisms. Education and career Blanchette grew up in New Jersey and describes her lifelong interest with biology and science as a result of early interactions with her grandparents about fish and fishing. Blanchette has a B.S. from the University of Notre Dame and earned her Ph.D. in 1994 from Oregon State University. Following her Ph.D. she moved to California where she was first a postdoctoral scientist at Hopkins Ma...

#3292

Wendy Foden

#131601

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Wendy Foden is a conservation biologist, best known for her work on climate change impacts on biodiversity. Education While completing her master's degree at the University of Cape Town , she discovered a latitudinal pattern of die-off of quiver trees suggesting that climate change could be to blame. She received funding to further the study, working with Guy Midgley at the South African National Biodiversity Institute in Cape Town. Foden spent much of 2001–2003 surveying Quiver Trees in Namibia and the arid regions of western South Africa and set up long term monitoring to track changes. Her...

#3293

Ying Ge

#179470

Overall Influence

Ying Ge is a Chinese-American chemist who is a Professor of Cell and Regenerative Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research considers the molecular mechanisms that underpin cardiac disease. She has previously served on the board of directors of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. In 2020 Ge was named on the Analytical Scientist Power List.

#3294

Doreen Main

#185448

Overall Influence

Doreen S. Main is a Scottish bioinformatics researcher and plant scientist specializing in genomics and plant genetics. She is a professor of bioinformatics in the Department of Horticulture at Washington State University.

#3295

Jasmin Graham

#181905

Overall Influence

Jasmin Graham is an American marine biologist known for her work in conservation and social justice, with a special focus on shark science. She is a co-founder of Minorities in Shark Sciences. Early life and education Graham grew up in South Carolina and was first introduced to marine science in high school and encountered shark research in college. Graham has a B.S. in Marine Biology and a B.A. in Spanish from the College of Charleston. Graham received a Masters of Science in 2020 working with Dean Grubbs at Florida State University with a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow...

#3296

Fadila Bouamr

#183778

Overall Influence

Fadila Bouamr is a French-American virologist researching the molecular mechanisms that govern the assembly and egress of an infectious HIV-1 and the proteins involved in these processes. She is chief of the viral budding unit at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

#3297

Tracey Rogers

#109082

Overall Influence

Tracey Rogers is a marine ecologist at the University of New South Wales who studies how mammals survive changing environments. Early life and education As a child, Rogers was interested in deadly sea creatures. Rogers became interested in leopard seals whilst working as a seal trainer at Taronga Zoo. The call of Astrid, a giant female leopard seal, inspired Rogers to pursue a career in research. Rogers completed her PhD, "Acoustic behaviour of the leopard seal, Hydrurga leptonyx : physical characteristics and functional significance", in 1997 at the University of Sydney.

#3298

Christa L. Deeleman-Reinhold

#105685

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Christa Laetitia Deeleman-Reinhold is a Dutch arachnologist. She specializes in spiders from Southeast Asia and Southern Europe, particularly cave-dwelling and tropical spiders. She donated a collection of about 25,000 Southeast Asian spiders, the largest collection of Southeast Asian spiders in existence, to the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden. In addition to numerous articles, she has written the book Forest Spiders of South East Asia .

#3299

Nadia Fröbisch

#177052

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Nadia Belinda Fröbisch is a German vertebrate paleontologist and developmental biologist who specializes in the evolution and development of amphibians. She is currently a professor at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin in the Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity.

#3300

Louise Purton

#184246

Overall Influence

Louise E. Purton is an Australian biologist who is Professor of Medicine and head of the Stem Cell Regulation Laboratory at St. Vincent's Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. Her research considers the stem cells responsible for the production of blood cells and the regulations of haematopoietic diseases. She was awarded the International Society for Experimental Hematology McCulloch & Till Award in 2022. She has experienced profound bilateral hearing loss since the age of three and has been recognised for her work supporting Equity and Diversity, particularly amongst women and people w...

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