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.
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List of the most influential female people in Biology,
#3501
Ethel Irene McLennan
1891 - 1983 (92 years)
Ethel Irene McLennan was an Australian botanist, mycologist and educator. Personal life and early career The daughter of George McLennan and Eleanor Tucker, she was born in Williamstown, Victoria and was educated at the Tintern Church of England Girls' Grammar School in Hawthorn. In 1914, she received a BSc from the University of Melbourne. From 1915 to 1931, she was a demonstrator and botany lecturer at the university. Her main areas of interest were mycology and plant-fungal relationships. However, she was also one of the illustrators of The Flora of the Northern Territories .
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Winifred Smith
1858 - 1925 (67 years)
Winifred Smith was an English botanist and educationist. She became a lecturer in the botany department at University College, London and took a leading role in supporting women students. First forty years She was born in Mortlake, Surrey on 5 November 1858 to Fanny and James Smith, who owned and ran a building business. Some of Smith's education was at Queen's College, London, a pioneering school for girls aged from 12 to 20. She then "devoted" herself to teaching until she began studying at University College in 1899. In the late 1870s her family experienced changes: her father went bankrup...
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Maria Petraccini
1759 - 1791 (32 years)
Maria Magdalena Petraccini Ferretti was an Italian anatomist, physician, professor of anatomy. She was born in Florence, Tuscany, 1759 and died in Bagnacavallo, Ravenna, 1791. Biography and personal life Pettracini was born in a merchant family in Tuscany. She married Italian physician and anatomy professor Francesco Ferretti. She became interested in surgery thanks to him, who was the chief at the Bagnacavallo hospital. Subsequently, Petraccini was tutored in surgery by her spouse, who taught her by operating on corpses. Her technique became so precise that she was envied even by those above her.
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Ann Stone Minot
1894 - 1980 (86 years)
Ann Stone Minot was an American biochemist and physiologist. She was born in Woodsville, New Hampshire, the oldest of six children born to Jonas Minot and Sybil Buck. For their early education, Minot and her siblings attended the Bath Village School, a small three-room schoolhouse. Starting in 1911, Minot matriculated to Smith College with the help of a partial scholarship, where she majored in chemistry and English. She graduated in 1915 with an A.B. degree.
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Ethel Ronzoni Bishop
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Ethel Ronzoni Bishop was an American biochemist and physiologist. Early life and education Ethel Ronzoni was born in California. She earned her BS degree from Mills College in 1913, her Master's from Columbia University in 1914, and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1923.
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Tatiana Krasnoselskaia
1884 - 1950 (66 years)
Tatiana Krasnoselskaia was a botanist specializing in plant physiology from the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union. Life Tatiana Abramovna Krasnoselskaia was born on 1 January 1884 in St Petersburg, capital of the Russian Empire. She studied physics and mathematics in the Bestuzhev Courses, graduating in 1904. She was an assistant professor at the St Petersburg Agricultural Courses and then became an assistant professor at the Bestuzhev Courses from 1909 to 1914. While teaching Krasnoselskaia earned her M.A. at Saint Petersburg Imperial University in 1912. Two years later she moved to...
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Elizabeth C. Miller
1920 - 1987 (67 years)
Elizabeth Cavert Miller was an American biochemist, known for fundamental research into the chemical mechanism of cancer carcinogenesis, working closely with her husband James A. Miller. Biography Miller was the daughter of an economist at the Federal Land Bank in Minneapolis. She studied biochemistry at the University of Minnesota . In 1945 she received her doctorate under Carl Baumann as a Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Scholar. As a postgraduate, she worked at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she and her husband James A. Miller studied chemical carcinogenesis.
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Elzada Clover
1897 - 1980 (83 years)
Elzada Clover was an American botanist who was the first to catalog plant life in the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. She and Lois Jotter became the first two women to raft the entire length of the Grand Canyon.
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Winifred Goldring
1888 - 1971 (83 years)
Winifred Goldring , was an American paleontologist whose work included a description of stromatolites, as well as the study of Devonian crinoids. She was the first woman in the nation to be appointed as a State Paleontologist.
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Agnes Claypole Moody
1870 - 1954 (84 years)
Agnes Mary Claypole Moody was an American zoologist and professor of natural science. Early life and education Agnes Mary Claypole Moody was born in Bristol, England to Jane and Edward Waller Claypole. She had a twin sister, Edith Jane Claypole , who was also a biologist. She attended Buchtel College, and in 1894 she attended Cornell University for her master's degree. She completed doctoral work at the University of Chicago in 1896.
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Effie A. Southworth
1860 - 1947 (87 years)
Effie Almira Southworth Spalding , was an American botanist and mycologist, and the first woman plant pathologist hired by the United States Department of Agriculture . Her most important discovery was the 1887 identification of the fungus Colletotrichum gossypii as the cause of cotton cankers, a disease which killed thousands of acres of cotton and was a major economic threat. She taught botany at several institutions, worked at the Desert Botanical Laboratory with her husband, and established the Botany Department Herbarium at the University of Southern California.
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Anna Vickers
1852 - 1906 (54 years)
Anna Vickers was a marine algologist and plant collector known principally for her work on algae of the Antilles and the Canary Islands. Biography Anna Vickers was born on 28 June 1852 in Bordeaux, France, though it is likely that her father was British. In 1879–80, she visited Australia and New Zealand with her family, traveling widely and becoming interested in the Maori language. In 1883 she published a monograph about these travels, Voyage en Australie et en Novelle-Zélande. Topics she touched on range from word derivations in the Maori language to the ferns and algae of south Australia. ...
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Sheina Marshall
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Sheina Macalister Marshall was a Scottish marine biologist who dedicated her life to the study of plant and animal plankton. She was an authority on the copepod Calanus. She worked at the Marine Biological Station at Millport, Cumbrae in Scotland from 1922-1964.
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Theodora Lisle Prankerd
1878 - 1939 (61 years)
Theodora Lisle Prankerd was a British botanist who worked on the growth of ferns, and lectured at Bedford College and the University of Reading. Early life and education Theodora Lisle Prankerd was born in Hackney, London, the daughter of general practitioner Orlando Reeves Prankerd and his second wife, Clementina Soares. She attended Brighton High School . She then studied botany Royal Holloway, University of London, first supported by a Founders scholarship, and then a Driver Scholarship, graduating with 1st Class Honours in 1903, at the time headed by Margaret Jane Benson.
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Eleanor Albert Bliss
1899 - 1987 (88 years)
Eleanor Albert Bliss was an immunologist who made significant advancements to the field of immunological research. She was also a dean and professor of biology at Bryn Mawr College. Life and education Eleanor Albert Bliss was born on December 16, 1899, in Jamestown, Rhode Island. Her family lived in Baltimore where her father, William J. Bliss was a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Her mother's name was Edith Grantham Bliss who was originally from Pennsylvania. The Bliss family lived in Baltimore for their children's entire childhood.
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Alice Carter Cook
1865 - 1943 (78 years)
Alice Carter Cook , , was an American botanist and author whose plant collections are now held by the Smithsonian Institution and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Cook was the first woman to receive a PhD in botany from an American university.
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Jane Ingham
1897 - 1982 (85 years)
Rose Marie "Jane" Ingham was an English botanist and scientific translator. She was appointed research assistant to Joseph Hubert Priestley in the Botany Department at the University of Leeds, and together, they were the first to separate cell walls from the root tip of broad beans. They analysed these cell walls and concluded that they contained protein. She carried out experiments on the cork layer of trees to study how cells function under a change of orientation and found profound differences in cell division and elongation in the epidermal layer of plants.
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Kathleen E. Carpenter
1891 - 1970 (79 years)
Kathleen E. Carpenter was a British freshwater ecologist. She is best known for her early studies of the effects of metal pollution on Welsh rivers and their biota, as well as her book Life in Inland Waters, the first textbook in English wholly devoted to freshwater ecology.
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Gudrun Ruud
1882 - 1958 (76 years)
Gudrun Marie Ruud was a Norwegian zoologist and educator. She is remembered for her pioneering embryological research based on experimentation with salamanders. Early life Born in Christiania, Ruud was the youngest daughter of a prosperous merchant, I.A. Ruud. She enjoyed a pleasant childhood in a large property with geese and poultry on the grounds. From an early age, she was attracted by the birds, animals and plants she encountered during her holidays in Østre Aker, just outside the capital. She first attended a teacher training establishment before embarking on science studies at the Royal Frederick University, graduating in 1913.
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Katherine Bitting
1869 - 1937 (68 years)
Katherine Golden Bitting was a food chemist for the United States Department of Agriculture, and the National Canners Association. She was a prolific author on the topic of food preservation. To facilitate her investigations, as the Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress states, she collected "materials on the sources, preparation, and consumption of foods, their chemistry, bacteriology, preservations, etc., from earliest times to the present day." She and her husband, Arvril Bitting, donated a significant collection of materials related to cookery to the Library of Congress. The Bitting...
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Maria Skalińska
1890 - 1977 (87 years)
Maria Skalińska was a Polish botanist and professor who studied plant anatomy and cell biology, particularly the plants of the Tatra mountains. She was the first to describe the species Poa nobilis.
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Elise L'Esperance
1878 - 1959 (81 years)
Elise Depew Strang L'Esperance was an American pathologist and physician, a pioneer in establishing a preventive model of cancer treatment. She was a pathologist noted for establishing cancer prevention clinics in New York. She founded two clinics: the Strang Tumor Clinic in 1932 and the Strang Cancer Prevention Clinic in 1937, which operated out of the New York Infirmary. In 1940, L'Esperance opened a second branch of the Strang Cancer Prevention Clinic at the Memorial Center for Cancer and Allied Diseases. During her medical career, L'Esperance published her research prolifically, credited ...
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Annette Frances Braun
1884 - 1978 (94 years)
Annette Frances Braun was an American entomologist and leading authority on microlepidoptera, a grouping of mostly small and nocturnal moths. Her special interest was leaf miners: moths whose larvae live and feed from within a leaf.
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Henrietta Hooker
1851 - 1929 (78 years)
Henrietta Edgecomb Hooker was an American botanist and professor at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary . She was the second female doctoral graduate in botany at Syracuse University, which made her one of the first women to earn a Ph.D. in botany from any U.S. university.
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Hanna Resvoll-Holmsen
1873 - 1943 (70 years)
Hanna Marie Resvoll-Holmsen was a Norwegian botanist – a female pioneer in Norwegian natural history education and nature conservation together with her sister, Thekla Resvoll. Life Hanna Resvoll-Holmsen suffered much from illness in her childhood and school attendance after her 12th year was sporadic. She took a high school exam in 1902, at which time she had also an unhappy marriage behind her. She studied natural history at the Royal Frederik's University in Kristiania and graduated in botany in 1910. From 1921, she was docent in plant geography at the same university, a position she held...
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Lois Lampe
1896 - 1978 (82 years)
Lois Lampe was an American botanist and educator. She taught at various levels for nearly 50 years at the Ohio State University before retiring and becoming assistant professor emerita in 1966. She was a member of six scientific societies and four honors societies during her teaching career.
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Fanny Langdon
1864 - 1899 (35 years)
Fanny E. Langdon was an American zoologist known for her work with invertebrate sensory organs and nervous systems. Langdon was born in Plymouth, New Hampshire and attended a normal school, teaching for three years in New Hampshire before pursuing undergraduate studies in zoology and botany at the University of Michigan in 1891. She earned her bachelor's degree in 1896 and her master's degree in 1897. After earning her degrees, she became an instructor in botany and zoology at the University of Michigan, and researched at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1897. ...
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Carlotta Case Hall
1880 - 1949 (69 years)
Carlotta Case Hall was an American botanist and university professor who collected and published on ferns. She also co-authored a handbook on the plants of Yosemite National Park. Biography Carlotta Hall was born in Kingsville, Ohio, in 1880 to Adelaide Percy Case and Quincy A. Case. She studied botany at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a B.S. in 1904. In 1910 she married the botanist Harvey Monroe Hall, with whom she had a daughter, Martha, in 1916.
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Mathilde Carmen Hertz
1891 - 1975 (84 years)
Mathilde Carmen Hertz was a biologist, and was one of the first influential women scientists in the field of biology and a pioneer in the field of comparative psychology. Working in Germany, her career started to unravel in 1933 due to her Jewish ancestry. She was the younger daughter of the famous physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.
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Elva Lawton
1896 - 1993 (97 years)
Elva Lawton was an American botanist and bryologist known for her research on ferns early in her career and her late-career comprehensive study of the mosses of the Western United States. Early life and education Elva Lawton was born in West Middletown, Pennsylvania on April 3, 1896. Prior to matriculating at university, she was an elementary school teacher in Pennsylvania from 1915 to 1919. She attended the University of Pittsburgh for her bachelor's degree, which she earned in 1923, and her master's degree, which she earned in 1925. From 1923 to 1925 she was also a high school biology and Latin teacher in Crafton, Pennsylvania.
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Ida Maclean
1877 - 1944 (67 years)
Ida Smedley Maclean was an English biochemist and the first woman admitted to the London Chemical Society. Early life and education Ida was born in Birmingham to William Smedley, a businessman, and Annie Elizabeth Duckworth. She was taught by her mother at home until the age of nine and lived in "a cultured and progressive home". She was educated at King Edward VI High School for Girls, Birmingham from 1886 to 1896, when she won a scholarship and began her studies at Newnham College, Cambridge. In the university's Natural Sciences Tripos she got a first class in part one and a second class in part two, studying chemistry and physiology.
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Edith Grace White
1890 - 1975 (85 years)
Edith Grace White was an American zoologist known for her studies of elasmobranchs . She was a professor of biology at Wilson College, and was a research associate of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
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Gladys Dick
1881 - 1963 (82 years)
Gladys Rowena Henry Dick was an American physician who co-developed an antitoxin and vaccine for scarlet fever with her husband, George F. Dick. Biography Gladys Rowena Henry was born in Pawnee City, Nebraska in 1881 and earned her B.S. in zoology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1900. She was a member of the Pi Beta Phi chapter at the University of Nebraska. Because her mother initially objected to Gladys attending medical school, she took graduate classes at Nebraska until 1903, then moved to Baltimore to attend Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Graduated in 1907 with her M.D., she then trained for a year at the University of Berlin.
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Mary Sophie Young
1872 - 1919 (47 years)
Mary Sophie Young was a botanist at the University of Texas significant for her field trips where she collected large quantities of specimens making her a key contributor to plant taxonomy in Texas.
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Erna Mohr
1894 - 1968 (74 years)
Erna W. Mohr was a German zoologist who made contributions to ichthyology and mammalogy. Mohr was long associated with the Zoological Museum Hamburg, where she was successively head of the Fish Biology Department, Department of Higher Vertebrates, and Curator of the Vertebrate Department. She was a member of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and held an honorary doctorate from the University of Munich.
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Elizabeth Ann Bartholomew
1912 - 1985 (73 years)
Elizabeth Ann Bartholomew was an American botanist dedicated to the study of plant systematics. Early life Bartholomew was born on June 14, 1912, in Wheeling, West Virginia. Influenced by her naturalist father, she became interested in the natural sciences at a young age. When she was 12 Bartholomew joined the Girl Scouts, and she subsequently earned all of the nature badges. After high school, Bartholomew attended West Virginia University. She became interested in botany during her freshman year after taking a class taught by Perry Daniel Strausbaugh.
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Marian E. Hubbard
1868 - 1956 (88 years)
Marian Elizabeth Hubbard was an American zoologist and associate professor of zoology at Wellesley College, where she taught for over 40 years. Early life Marian Elizabeth Hubbard was born in McGregor, Iowa, to parents Rodolphus and Hanna Hubbard, In 1886 she graduated from McGregor school. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary until 1889 and graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.S. in 1894.
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Portia Holman
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
Portia Grenfell Holman was an Australian child psychiatrist who practiced in London. Early life and education Holman was born in 1903 in Sydney; she was the only child of William Holman, who would become the Premier of New South Wales, and Ada Augusta Holman, a writer. She gained a Bachelor of Arts at The Women's College of the University of Sydney, and in 1923 she enrolled at Newnham College, Cambridge, graduating in economics in 1926. She then went on to study at the University of Paris and the London School of Economics, before taking up a role in lecturing and research at the University of St Andrews from 1927 to 1933.
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Freda Bage
1883 - 1970 (87 years)
Anna Frederika Bage was an Australian biologist, university professor and principal and women's activist. Bage was born in 1883 and studied at Oxford High School for girls and Fairlight School. In 1907, Bage received her Masters of Science from the University of Melbourne and began an extensive career. Bage worked as a junior demonstrator in Biology and in 1908 won the King's College scholarship and in 1909 travelled to London working under Arthur Dendy which led Bage receiving a fellowship by the Linnean Society in 1910–11. Bage returned to the University of Melbourne where she worked as ...
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Doris Mackinnon
1883 - 1956 (73 years)
Doris Mackinnon was a British zoologist. Born in Scotland, her father was a Consular Agent and her mother managed a "women's home". Influenced by Maria Gordon, Mackinnon studied botany and geology at Aberdeen University, graduating in 1906. She received the "Carnegie scholarship", studying abroad for two years before returning to Scotland. She achieved her doctorate from Aberdeen University in 1914, becoming a lecturer at University College, Dundee , in 1916.
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Charlotte Maria King
1864 - 1937 (73 years)
Charlotte Maria King was a botanist, mycologist and agronomist who worked at the Iowa State College Agricultural Experiment Station. Written works Articles Louis Hermann Pammel, Charlotte M. King. 1925. Some New Weeds of Iowa. Circular 98 . Agric. Experiment Station, Iowa State College of Agric. & Mechanic Arts, 16 p. 1925King, Charlotte M. stalk and corn root diseases in Iowa. Agric. Experiment Station, Iowa State College of Agric. and Mechanic Arts, 8 p. 1915King, Charlotte M. Four new fungous diseases in Iowa. Agric. Experiment Station, Iowa State College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, 21 p.
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Winifred Betts
1894 - 1971 (77 years)
Mary Winifred Aitken was a New Zealand botanist. She was the first female lecturer at the University of Otago. Biography Born in Nelson on 11 May 1894, Betts was the daughter of printer and stationer Alfred George Betts and Ada Betts . Known to friends as Winnie, she was educated at Nelson College for Girls and received her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the University of Otago. On her graduation, she received the National Research Scholarship that was awarded at the university each year, which offered her an income of £100 a year, plus lab expenses, so she could con...
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Mary Hefferan
1873 - 1948 (75 years)
Mary Hefferan was an American bacteriologist and community leader. She earned her PhD in zoology in 1903 in Chicago. Life and work Mary Hefferan was born in Eastmanville, Ottawa County, Michigan. and graduated from Central High School. She attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees there in 1896 and 1898, respectively. She received her PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1903 with a dissertation on bacteriology.
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Ida Augusta Keller
1866 - 1932 (66 years)
Ida Augusta Keller was an American plant physiologist and teacher in Philadelphia. Early life and family Ida Keller was born in on June 11, 1866 to William Charles Christian and Maria Augusta Keller in Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse, while her parents were visiting their former home. She grew up in Philadelphia, where her father was a physician, and was graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Girls in 1884.
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Vivi Laurent-Täckholm
1898 - 1978 (80 years)
Vivi Laurent-Täckholm was a Swedish botanist and children's book writer, active in Egypt. Early years and education Vivi Laurent-Täckholm was the daughter of Dr. Wilhelm Edvard Laurent and Lilly Jenny Karolina Bergstrand. She was the sister of Torbern Laurent and aunt to Torvard C. Laurent. She studied botany at the University of Stockholm and received her degree in 1921. She traveled to the US from 1921 to 1923. In 1926, she married botany professor Gunnar Täckholm . They moved to Egypt the same year and began work on the flora of Egypt.
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Nathalie A. Desjatova-Shostenko
1889 - 1968 (79 years)
Nathalie A. Desjatova-Shostenko , later Nathalie A. Roussine, was a Russian-French botanist noted for identifying at least 70 species of plants, many in the genus Thymus. Between 1925 and 1930, Natalie Shostenko was a director of Botany Department at Askania-Nova, after 1930 she then directed the Department of Geography at the Ukrainian Institute of Applied Botany. In 1944 she emigrated to France, due to return of the Soviet regime to Ukraine.
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Angeliki Panagiotatou
1875 - 1954 (79 years)
Angeliki Panagiotatou was a Greek physician and microbiologist. She was the first woman physician in modern Greece to have graduated from a University in Greece . Life Born in Greece, Panagiotatou and her sister Alexandra were the first two female students to be accepted in the medical school at Athens University in 1893, after having proved that there were not formal law banning women from attending university in Greece. In 1897, she became he first woman to graduate from the Medical School in Athens.
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Lucy Mary Cavanagh
1871 - 1936 (65 years)
Lucy Mary Cavanagh was an American botanist and plant collector, noted for her identification of several species of bryophytes. Works
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Sarah Hynes
1859 - 1938 (79 years)
Sarah Hynes was a Kingdom of Prussia-born, Australian botanist and teacher. Sarah Hynes was born on 30 September 1859 in Danzig, Prussia to William John Hynes , a master mariner and his wife Eliza Bell. Sarah was educated at Edinburgh Ladies' College, Upton House in St John's Wood, London, and at Chichester College in Sussex. She earned a botanical certificate from South Kensington Museum, Science and Art Department.
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Maria Isabel Hylton Scott
1889 - 1990 (101 years)
María Isabel Sofia Hylton Scott y Pacheco was an Argentine zoologist, malacologist and teacher. She is known as the first woman in Argentina who obtained a doctorate in Zoology. She described at least 1 family, 47 species and 4 subspecies of Mollusca.
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