The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
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List of the most influential female people in Biology,
#3501
Lorande Loss Woodruff
1879 - 1947 (68 years)
Lorande Loss Woodruff was an American biologist, notable for his exhaustive studies of unicelluar eukaryotes, especially ciliates; and for his long tenure as a trustee of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#3502
Julie Lockwood
1900 - Present (126 years)
Julie L. Lockwood is an American ecologist who is a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at Rutgers University. She is the Director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. Her research investigates how invasive species impact natural ecosystems. In 2022, she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#3503
Gerta von Ubisch
1882 - 1965 (83 years)
Gerta von Ubisch was a German physicist, geneticist, and botanist. She studied barley and found a genetic explanation for heterostyly. In 1933 she lost her position at Heidelberg University because of her Jewish heritage.
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Nellie B. Eales
1889 - 1989 (100 years)
Nellie Barbara Eales was a British zoologist. She was a senior lecturer at the University of Reading and published research papers on a variety of zoological topics as well as a two volume catalogue on Professor F. J. Cole's extensive library.
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Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks
1888 - 1981 (93 years)
Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks was a cellular biologist best known for her 1932 discovery that the staining compound methylene blue is an antidote to carbon monoxide and cyanide poisoning. She held a PhD in zoology and spent her professional career working as a researcher at the United States Public Health Service and the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#3506
Marion Webster
1921 - 1985 (64 years)
Marion Elizabeth Webster-Bukovsky was a Canadian-American biochemist who was the first to isolate the Vi antigen of typhoid and to determine its structure. She published extensively on the kinin–kallikrein system while at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Webster was an advocate for women in science and served as president of the Association for Women in Science and Graduate Women in Science.
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Marjorie Roloff Stetten
1916 - 1983 (67 years)
Marjorie Roloff Stetten was an American biochemist whose carbohydrate metabolism research led to the advancements in biomedical knowledge of enzymes and biosynthesis and the discovery of AICA ribonucleotide. During her career, she was an investigator at the National Institutes of Health and a research professor of experimental medicine at Rutgers Medical School.
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Pearl Kendrick
1890 - 1980 (90 years)
Pearl Louella Kendrick was an American bacteriologist known for co-developing the first successful whooping cough vaccine alongside fellow Michigan Department of Public Health scientist Grace Eldering and chemist Loney Gordon in the 1930s. In the decades after the initial pertussis vaccine rollout, Kendrick contributed to the promotion of international vaccine standards in Latin America and the Soviet Union. Kendrick and her colleagues also developed a 3-in-1 shot for diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus called the DTP vaccine which was initially released in 1948.
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Emma Lucy Braun
1889 - 1971 (82 years)
E. Lucy Braun was a prominent botanist, ecologist, and expert on the forests of the eastern United States who was a professor of the University of Cincinnati. She was the first woman to be elected President of the Ecological Society of America, in 1950. She was an environmentalist before the term was popularized, and a pioneering woman in her field, winning many awards for her work.
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Mary Dora Rogick
1906 - 1964 (58 years)
Mary Dora Rogick was an American zoologist. In 1935 she joined the College of New Rochelle in New York, where she spent her career as a professor and researcher. She was a specialist in the taxonomy and ecology of bryozoa, a phylum of aquatic invertebrate animals.
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Ann P. Wood
Ann Patricia Wood is a retired British biochemist and bacteriologist who specialized in the ecology, taxonomy and physiology of sulfur-oxidizing chemolithoautotrophic bacteria and how methylotrophic bacteria play a role in the degradation of odour causing compounds in the human mouth, vagina and skin. The bacterial genus Annwoodia was named to honor her contributions to microbial research in 2017.
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Bertha Chapman Cady
1873 - 1956 (83 years)
Bertha Louise Chapman Cady was an American entomologist and educator. Life Born Bertha Louise Chapman, she received a Bachelor of Arts in 1895 and a Master of Arts in 1902 from Stanford University. She taught high school biology from 1900 to 1907. From 1907 to 1909, she was an assistant in nature study at the University of Chicago. She then became an instructor in biology at California State Teacher's College. From 1921 to 1923, Cady was a lecturer at Stanford University. In 1923, she earned a PhD in entomology from Stanford with her thesis entitled A study of the effects of feeding insect infested cereal food products to animals.
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Helen Gwynne-Vaughan
1879 - 1967 (88 years)
Dame Helen Charlotte Isabella Gwynne-Vaughan, was a prominent English botanist and mycologist. During the First World War, she served in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps and then as Commandant of the Women's Royal Air Force from 1918 to 1919. During the Second World War, from 1939 to 1941, she served as Chief Controller of the Auxiliary Territorial Service .
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Hope Hibbard
1893 - 1988 (95 years)
Hope Hibbard was an American biologist, cytologist, zoologist, and professor of zoology. Born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, she conducted research in the fields of histology and marine biology, utilizing organisms such as silkworms, limpets, earthworms, and frogs. Hibbard dedicated most of her life to education as a professor at multiple institutions, including Bryn Mawr College, Elmira College, and Oberlin College. She received accolades for her research and academic merits, such as the Sarah Berliner Research Fellowship and the Adelia A. Field Johnston Professor of Zoology. Hibbard is not only ...
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Hannah Caroline Aase
1883 - 1980 (97 years)
Hannah Caroline Aase was a botanist and cytologist. Career Aase received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of South Dakota in 1906 and a graduate degree from South Dakota State College in 1928. In 1915, she received a PhD from the University of Chicago. In her 1915 dissertation, she studied the vascular anatomy of the megasporophylls of conifers. She found that plants in the Coniferales family generally reduce the number of sporophylls in the strobilus and a modified compound sporophyll appears later in disguised forms but loses one of the sporophyll members.
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Alice Maria Ottley
1882 - 1971 (89 years)
Alice Maria Ottley was a botanist, author, assistant professor and curator of the herbarium at Wellesley College. She collected and studied American flora, particularly species of Lotus, and publishing books and articles on botany.
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Carlotta Maury
1874 - 1938 (64 years)
Carlotta Joaquina Maury was a geologist, stratigrapher, paleontologist, and was one of the first women to work as a professional scientist in the oil and gas industry. She worked as a palaeontologist within an oil company; she was a petroleum geologist at Royal Dutch Shell. Maury focused on Tertiary mollusks. Maury initially taught in universities after attending Cornell University finishing with a PhD in 1902, although she had trouble achieving a full-time position. However, she really wanted to pursue paleontological expeditions. Even though she went on to later be successful, there were still elements of difficulty in her early career, in some ways due to her gender.
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Adele Gerard Lewis Grant
1881 - 1969 (88 years)
Adele Gerard Lewis Grant was an American feminist, botanist, teacher, taxonomist, curator, and explorer. Career In 1903, she obtained a B.Sc. in botany from the University of California at Berkeley. She continued with her studies, gaining an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in botany from Washington State University. Before her move to South Africa, she taught at the Missouri Botanical Garden and Cornell University.
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Frjeda Blanchard
1889 - 1977 (88 years)
Frjeda Blanchard, née Cobb , was an American plant and animal geneticist, the first to demonstrate Mendelian inheritance in reptiles. Life and work Frjeda Blanchard was born on October 2, 1889, in Sydney, Australia, daughter of the plant pathologist and nematologist, Nathan Cobb. Her family returned to the United States in 1905, first living in Hawaii and then settling in Washington, D.C. Cobb's family helped him in his work and Frjeda aided her father in his laboratory. She went to Radcliffe College for three years before returning home to assist her father in his home laboratory and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign with a B.S.
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Florence Annie Mockeridge
1889 - 1958 (69 years)
Florence Annie Mockeridge was a British botanist and university professor. Mockeridge was a lecturer at King's College, London, 1917-1922, and lecturer at University College Swansea 1922-1954. She was also a Linnean Society Fellow. Her research output included significant work on growth promoting substances.
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Edith A. Roberts
1881 - 1977 (96 years)
Edith Adelaide Roberts was an American botanist studying plant physiology and a pioneer in plant ecology. She created the first ecological laboratory in the United States, promoted natural landscaping along with Elsa Rehmann, and proved that plants were the main source of vitamin A.
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Angela Roberts
Angela Charlotte Roberts is a British neurobiologist who is a professor of physiology at the University of Cambridge. Her research considers the neural circuits that underpin cognition and emotion. She leads the Cambridge Marmoset Research Centre. She was awarded the 2020 Goldman-Rakic Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Cognitive Neuroscience.
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Josephine Langworthy Rathbone
1899 - 1989 (90 years)
Josephine Langworthy Rathbone was an American physiologist whose research and work involved physical education and relaxation. She taught at Teachers College, Columbia University from 1930 to 1958, and was a founding member of the American College of Sports Medicine .
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Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner
1871 - 1935 (64 years)
Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner was a Jewish bacteriologist and physician, known for her research on tuberculosis and public health. She was the second woman to become a Professor in Prussia. Biography Lydia Rabinowitsch was born at Kovno, Russian Empire . She was educated at the girls' gymnasium of her native city, and privately in Latin and Greek, subsequently studying natural sciences at the universities of Zurich and Bern . After graduation she went to Berlin, where Professor Robert Koch permitted her to pursue her bacteriological studies at the Institute for Infectious Diseases. She became t...
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Hazel Branch
1886 - 1973 (87 years)
Hazel Elizabeth Branch was an American entomologist. Branch was affiliated with the American Society of Zoologists and the Academy for the Advancement of Science. Branch was also the president of the Kansas Academy of Science.
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Ruby Hirose
1904 - 1960 (56 years)
Ruby Sakae Hirose was an American biochemist and bacteriologist. She did research on blood clotting and thrombin, allergies, and researched cancer using antimetabolites. Family and early life Ruby Hirose was born to Shiusaka Hirose and Tome in Kent, Washington, on August 30, 1904. She was the second child of seven children in the family, but because the first child died very young, grew up as the oldest child of six in the family. She had four sisters and one brother, and they lived in the White River area around Seattle. The second child in the family was Fumiko, two years younger than Ruby.
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Olive Griffith Stull
1905 - 1969 (64 years)
Olive Griffith Stull was an American herpetologist. Stull was born in Rochester, New York. She married Loy Davis in 1930, one year after completing her degree at the University of Michigan. She worked in the field of veterinary medicine and contributed to research in a variety of fields. Her appointments included fellowships at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology and at her alma mater, where she was a student of Alexander Grant Ruthven. She published an important revision of the colubrid snake genus Pituophis, and is the author of the species Pituophis ruthveni whose name honours her professor at Michigan.
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Gwynneth Vaughan Buchanan
1886 - 1945 (59 years)
Gwynneth Vaughan Buchanan was an Australian zoologist. She is best known for her work on animal morphology, culminating in the book Elements of Animal Morphology. She was a lecturer, and then a senior lecturer, at the University of Melbourne from 1921 to 1944.
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Helen Redfield
1900 - 1988 (88 years)
Helen Redfield , was an American geneticist. Redfield graduated from Rice University in 1920, followed by earning her Ph.D. in zoology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1921. While at Rice, she worked in the mathematics department. She joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1925 and that same year she became a National Research Fellow at Columbia University. In 1926 she married Jack Schultz, the couple had two children. Redfield retained her maiden name upon her marriage. In 1929 she worked as a teaching fellow at New York University. Ten years later she worked as a geneticist in the Kerckhoff Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
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Lottlisa Behling
1909 - 1989 (80 years)
Lottlisa Behling was a German art historian and botanist. Biography Lottlisa Behling was born on 15 July 1909 in Neustettin, Pomerania. She was a double major in art history and botany at the universities of Greifswald, Halle and Berlin. She received her doctorate degree 1937 in Berlin. Her doctoral thesis was titled Das ungegenständliche Bauornament der Gotik. Versuch einer Geschichte des Maßwerks.
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Marion Fyfe
1897 - 1986 (89 years)
Marion Liddell Fyfe was a New Zealand academic, specialising in taxonomy of planarians and other flatworms, the first woman zoology lecturer at the University of Otago, and the first woman to be elected to the Council of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
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Margaret Blackwood
1909 - 1986 (77 years)
Dame Margaret Blackwood was an Australian botanist and geneticist. She attended the University of Melbourne and lectured there for the majority of her career, becoming deputy chancellor after her academic retirement. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1981 and was inducted posthumously into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001.
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Mignon Talbot
1869 - 1950 (81 years)
Mignon Talbot was an American paleontologist. Talbot recovered and named the only known fossils of the dinosaur Podokesaurus holyokensis, which were found near Mount Holyoke College in 1910, and published a scientific description of the specimen in 1911. In 1909 she became the first woman elected to be a member of the Paleontological Society. In the state of New York, she contributed to the Helderbergian crinoids and studied the faunas of Stafford limestone.
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Margaret Levyns
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Margaret Rutherford Bryan Levyns was an eminent South African phytogeographer, botanist and taxonomist. Early life and education Margaret Levyns was initially educated at home by her mother and later attended Ellerslie Girls' School. She obtained a first class matriculation and was awarded two bursaries. In 1908 she enrolled at the South African College intending to study mathematics, geology and chemistry, with botany for her honours year. Prof. Harold Pearson persuaded her to take botany as a major subject. After winning two scholarships, the Queen Victoria Scholarship and the 1851 Exhibiti...
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Mary Logan Reddick
1914 - 1966 (52 years)
Mary Logan Reddick was an American neuroembryologist who earned her PhD from Radcliffe College, Harvard University in 1944. She was a full professor, first at Morehouse College, and then at the University of Atlanta from 1953 to her death. Her doctoral dissertation was on the study of chick embryos, and she went on to do research with time-lapse microscopy in tissue cultures.
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Edith Clements
1877 - 1971 (94 years)
Edith Gertrude Clements , also known as Edith S. Clements and Edith Schwartz Clements, was an American botanist and pioneer of botanical ecology who was the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Nebraska. She was married to botanist Frederic Clements, with whom she collaborated throughout her professional life. Together they founded the Alpine Laboratory, a research station at Pikes Peak, Colorado. Clements was also a botanical artist who illustrated her own books as well as joint publications with Frederic.
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Eva Myrtelle Roush
1886 - 1954 (68 years)
Eva Myrtelle Roush was an American botanist noted for her study of Sidalcea and her work at the Arnold Arboretum. In 1930, she received her doctorate degree in botany from Washington University in St. Louis.
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Myrtle E. Johnson
1881 - 1967 (86 years)
Myrtle Elizabeth Johnson was an American marine biologist, ascidiologist, and educator in California in the early 20th century. She was the first woman PhD faculty member at the San Diego State College , where she taught from 1921 to 1946, and was chair of the Biology department from 1928 to 1940. Her major work, Seashore Animals of the Pacific Coast, published in 1927, was the standard descriptive text of intertidal species until Ed Ricketts's Between Pacific Tides was published in 1939. Ricketts considered Johnson's book "the vade mecum of marine biologists of the Pacific. Indispensable."
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Maria Dahl
1872 - 1972 (100 years)
Maria Johanna Dahl, née Grosset was a Ukrainian-born German zoologist, arachnologist, and carcinologist. Along with her husband, Friedrich Dahl, she was a co-author and editor of the zoological series Die Tierwelt Deutschlands, published between 1925 and 1968.
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Liivia Laasimer
1918 - 1988 (70 years)
Liivia-Maria Laasimer was an Estonian botanist, geobotanist, bryologist and plant systematist. Life and work Laasimer was born in Tartu, Estonia, and in 1941 she graduated from Tartu University. From 1941 to 1947 she worked in Tartu University's Department of Plant Systematics and Geobotany at the Institute of Botany. From 1947 to 1988 she worked at the Estonian Institute of Zoology and Botany and was head of its botanical section from 1952 to 1986 and chief scientist from 1986 to 1988. There she researched geobotany and plant geography and ecology. She also prepared Estonian vegetation maps...
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Marianne Plehn
1863 - 1946 (83 years)
Marianne Plehn was a German zoologist. She was the first woman to be awarded a doctorate at the ETH Zurich and the first woman to be appointed as professor in Bavaria in 1914. Plehn is commemorated in the names of three polyclads and 12 disease agents of fishes. The breadth of her research on diseases of fishes defined the scientific study in this area. She published 114 scientific papers on the subject. She worked with Bruno Hofer and has been honoured as one of the founders of fish pathology.
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Freda Detmers
1867 - 1934 (67 years)
Frederica "Freda" Detmers was an American botanist. Life and education Detmers was born in Dixon, Lee County, Illinois, on January 16, 1867, to Henry Detmers and Heimke. Her father was the founder of the Ohio State University Veterinary College. She studied at the University, graduating in 1887 with a B.S. She returned to graduate with an M.S. in 1891.
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Alice Rich Northrop
1864 - 1922 (58 years)
Alice Rich Northrop was an American botanist. She was known for expanding access to nature for New York City's public school children. Northrop traveled extensively to regions of the world where women did not usually venture, including Central America, the Caribbean, and Western North America. On a trip to the Bahamas, she and her husband, John Isaiah Northrop, discovered 18 new species. Her husband was killed in a laboratory accident in 1891, a week before their son was born.
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Marjory Stephenson
1885 - 1948 (63 years)
Marjory Stephenson was a British biochemist. In 1945, she was one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the other being Kathleen Lonsdale. She wrote Bacterial Metabolism , which ran to three editions and was a standard textbook for generations of microbiologists. A founder of the Society for General Microbiology, she also served as its second president. In 1953, the Society established the Marjory Stephenson Memorial Lecture in her memory. This is the Society's principal prize, awarded biennially for an outstanding contribution of current importance in microbiology.
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Ethelwynn Trewavas
1900 - 1993 (93 years)
Ethelwynn Trewavas was an ichthyologist at the British Museum of Natural History. She was known for her work on the families Cichlidae and Sciaenidae. She worked with Charles Tate Regan, another ichthyologist and taxonomist.
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Jantina Tammes
1871 - 1947 (76 years)
Jantina "Tine" Tammes was a Dutch botanist and geneticist and the first professor of genetics in the Netherlands. Early life and education Tammes was born on 23 June 1871 in Groningen in the Netherlands. She was the daughter of cocoa manufacturer Beerend Tammes and Swaantje Pot. She had a sister and four brothers, and was the aunt of the international lawyer Arnold Tammes and the botanist Pieter Merkus Lambertus Tammes, namesake of the Tammes problem in mathematics.
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Astrid Cleve
1875 - 1968 (93 years)
Astrid Maria Cleve von Euler was a Swedish botanist, geologist, chemist and researcher at Uppsala University. She was the first woman in Sweden to obtain a doctoral degree of science. Life Astrid Maria Cleve was born into academic life on 22 January 1875, in Uppsala, Sweden. She was the eldest daughter of the chemist, oceanographer, geologist and professor Per Teodor Cleve and author Carolina Alma "Caralma" Öhbom . Her younger sisters were Agnes Cleve-Jonand , a visual artist and pioneer of Modernism in Sweden and Célie Brunius , a journalist. They received their early education at home from ...
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Isabel Clifton Cookson
1893 - 1973 (80 years)
Isabel Clifton Cookson was an Australian botanist who specialised in palaeobotany and palynology. Early years and education Cookson was born at Hawthorn, Victoria, and attended the Methodist Ladies' College at Kew where she gained honours in anatomy, physiology and botany in the senior public examination. Cookson went on to study for her BSc at the University of Melbourne and graduated in 1916 with majors in botany and zoology.
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Alessandra Giliani
1307 - 1326 (19 years)
Alessandra Giliani was thought to be an Italian natural historian, best known as the first woman to be recorded in historical documents as practicing anatomy and pathology. However, the historical evidence for her existence is limited. Some scholars consider her to be a fiction invented by Alessandro Machiavelli . whilst others hold that the participation of a woman in anatomy at that time was so shocking that she has been edited out of history.
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Helen Dean King
1869 - 1955 (86 years)
Helen Dean King was an American biologist. She was involved in breeding the Wistar lab rat, a strain of rats genetically homogeneous albinos intended for use in biological and medical research. Life and work Born at Owego, New York, she graduated from Vassar College in 1892, and in 1899 she received her doctorate in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College, with a thesis supervised by embryologist and geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan. She had majored in morphology. She remained at the College after graduation as a fellow and student assistant in biology from 1897 to 1904.
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