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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,

#3551

Agnes Arber

1879 - 1960 (81 years)

Agnes Arber FRS was a British plant morphologist and anatomist, historian of botany and philosopher of biology. She was born in London but lived most of her life in Cambridge, including the last 51 years of her life. She was the first woman botanist to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and the third woman overall. She was the first woman to receive the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society of London for her contributions to botanical science.

#3552

Charlotte Auerbach

1899 - 1994 (95 years)

Charlotte "Lotte" Auerbach FRS FRSE was a German geneticist who contributed to founding the science of mutagenesis. She became well known after 1942 when she discovered with A. J. Clark and J. M. Robson that mustard gas could cause mutations in fruit flies. She wrote 91 scientific papers, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Royal Society of London.

#3553

Honor Fell

1900 - 1986 (86 years)

Dame Honor Bridget Fell, DBE, FRS was a British scientist and zoologist. Her contributions to science included the development of experimental methods in organ culture, tissue culture, and cell biology.

#3554

Margaret Oakley Dayhoff

1925 - 1983 (58 years)

Margaret Belle Dayhoff was an American physical chemist and a pioneer in the field of bioinformatics. Dayhoff was a professor at Georgetown University Medical Center and a noted research biochemist at the National Biomedical Research Foundation, where she pioneered the application of mathematics and computational methods to the field of biochemistry. She dedicated her career to applying the evolving computational technologies to support advances in biology and medicine, most notably the creation of protein and nucleic acid databases and tools to interrogate the databases. She originated one of the first substitution matrices, point accepted mutations .

#3555

Dorothea Bennett

1929 - 1990 (61 years)

Dorothea Bennett was a geneticist, known for the genetics of early mammalian development and for research into mammalian sperm surface structures and their role in fertilization and spermatogenesis. She was "one of the major figures in mouse developmental genetics".

#3556

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.

#3557

Mary Jane Guthrie

1895 - 1975 (80 years)

Mary Jane Guthrie was an American zoologist and cytologist known for her studies of cytoplasm in reproductive and endocrine cells. Early life and education Guthrie was born in New Bloomfield, Missouri. She graduated from the University of Missouri with a bachelor's degree in 1916 and a master's degree in 1918, then earned her Ph.D. in zoology at Bryn Mawr College in 1922. While working towards her Ph.D., Guthrie served as a zoology instructor and demonstrator.

#3558

Sarah Bedichek Pipkin

1913 - 1977 (64 years)

Sarah Craven Bedichek Pipkin was an American geneticist. Education Pipkin earned her B.A. in Zoology and Ph.D in Genetics from the University of Texas, where she studied with J. T. Patterson and H. J. Muller. She was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship to King's College, London and studied under J. B. S. Haldane.

#3559

Vera Danchakoff

Vera Danchakoff

1879 - 1950 (71 years)

Vera Mikhaĭlovna Danchakoff was an anatomist, cell biologist and embryologist from the Russian Empire. In 1908 she was the first woman in Russian Empire to be appointed as a professor and she became a pioneer in stem cell research. She emigrated to the United States in 1915 where she was a leading exponent of the idea that all types of blood cell develop from a single type of cell. She has sometimes been called "the mother of stem cells". She later returned to Europe to continue with her research.

#3560

Hally Jolivette Sax

1884 - 1979 (95 years)

Hally Delilia Mary Jolivette Sax , was an American botanist known for her work on the chromosomal structure of plant species and how it is affected by radiation and other mutagens. Biography Hally Jolivette received her A.B. in 1906 and her A.M. in 1909 — both from the University of Wisconsin — and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1912. She taught at the University of Wisconsin , Stanford , and Washington State College . While at the latter institution, she met and in 1915 married the botanist Karl Sax, one of her cytology students. They later had three sons.

#3561

Margaret Altmann

1900 - 1984 (84 years)

Margaret Altmann was a German-American biologist focusing on animal husbandry and psychobiology. She was one of the first women to work in the psychobiology, ethology and animal husbandry fields, with a focus on livestock.

#3562

Eleanor Carothers

Eleanor Carothers

1882 - 1957 (75 years)

Estrella Eleanor Carothers , known primarily as Eleanor Carothers, was an American zoologist, geneticist, and cytologist known for her work with grasshoppers. She discovered important physical evidence for the concept of independent assortment, vital to modern understanding of genetics.

#3563

LaDema Langdon

1893 - 1977 (84 years)

LaDema Mary Langdon was an American botanist known for her work on floral anatomy, taxonomy, embryology, and morphology of Juglandaceae, Fagaceae, Cycas, and Dioon spinulosum. She was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was a professor at Baltimore Junior College and Goucher College. She earned her bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and her graduate degrees from the University of Chicago.

#3564

Wanda Kirkbride Farr

Wanda Kirkbride Farr

1895 - 1983 (88 years)

Wanda K. Farr was an American botanist known for her discovery of the mechanism by which cellulose is formed in the walls of plant cells. Early life Wanda Farr was born near New Matamoras, Ohio on January 9, 1895, to parents Frederick Alonzo Kirkbride and Clara M Nikolaus. When she was four years old, her father died and she and her mother went to live with Wanda's grandparents in New Matamoras. Her great-grandfather, Dr. Samuel Richardson, was a physician who lived in the same town. He helped cultivate her interest in science, in particular in plants and growing things.

#3565

Betty Batham

1917 - 1974 (57 years)

Elizabeth Joan Batham was a New Zealand marine biologist and university lecturer. A past president of the New Zealand Marine Sciences Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Batham directed the Portobello Marine Biological Station at the University of Otago for more than 23 years.

#3566

Dian Fossey

1932 - 1985 (53 years)

Dian Fossey was an American primatologist and conservationist known for undertaking an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups from 1966 until her murder in 1985. She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, is Fossey's account of her scientific study of the gorillas at Karisoke Research Center and prior career. It was adapted into a 1988 film of the same name.

#3567

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.

#3568

Helen Gwynne-Vaughan

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 .

#3569

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 ...

#3570

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.

#3571

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.

#3572

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.

#3573

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.

#3574

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.

#3575

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.

#3576

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.

#3577

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.

#3578

Josephine Langworthy Rathbone

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 .

#3579

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.

#3580

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.

#3581

Alice Rich Northrop

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.

#3582

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.

#3583

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 ...

#3584

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.

#3585

Alessandra Giliani

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.

#3586

Helen Dean King

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.

#3587

Willey Glover Denis

Willey Glover Denis

1879 - 1929 (50 years)

Willey Glover Denis was an American biochemist and physiologist. She was noted particularly for her collaborations with Otto Folin, including studies of protein metabolism. She was a pioneer in the field of clinical chemistry and the measurement of protein in biological fluids

#3588

Maria Pavlova

1854 - 1938 (84 years)

Maria Vasilievna Pavlova was a Ukrainian who became a paleontologist and academician in Moscow during the Russian Empire and Soviet era. She is known for her research on the fossils of and the naming of hoofed-mammals of the Tertiary period. She was a professor at Moscow State University. She also made great efforts to establish the Museum of Paleontology at the university. In 1926, the museum was named after her and her second husband, Alexei Petrovich Pavlov, a geologist, paleontologist, and academician who made a significant contribution in the field of stratigraphy.

#3589

Margaret Jane Benson

Margaret Jane Benson

1859 - 1936 (77 years)

Margaret Jane Benson was an English botanist specialising in paleobotany, and one of the first female members of the Linnean Society of London. Most of her career was spent as the head of the Department of Botany at Royal Holloway College, University of London from 1893 to 1922. In 1927, a botanical laboratory was dedicated in her name. She travelled extensively with Ethel Sargant, collecting specimens, laboratory equipment, and meeting other botanists around the world. Her students included Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan, Theodora Lisle Prankerd, Nesta Ferguson, and Emily Mary Berridge.

#3590

Ethel Sargant

1863 - 1918 (55 years)

Ethel Sargant was a British botanist who studied both the cytology and morphology of plants. She was one of the first female members of the Linnean Society and the first woman to serve on their council. She was the first woman to preside over a Section of the British Association. At Cambridge, she was elected an Honorary Fellow of Girton College in 1913 and also became President of the British Federation of University Women from 1913 until 1918.

#3591

Marie Taylor

1911 - 1990 (79 years)

Marie Clark Taylor was an American botanist, the first woman to earn a science doctorate at Fordham University, and the Head of the Botany Department at Howard University from 1947 to her retirement in 1976. Her research interest was plant photomorphogenesis.

#3592

Marcella Boveri

Marcella Boveri

1863 - 1950 (87 years)

Marcella Boveri was an American biologist. She was married to the German biologist Theodor Boveri . Their daughter Margret Boveri became one of the best-known post-war German journalists. Life She was born Marcella O'Grady in Boston, the daughter of Irish immigrants. She attended Girls' High School in Boston. She studied with William Thompson Sedgwick at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she became the first woman to receive a degree in biology from MIT. After she completed her post-graduate studies in Harvard University O'Grady worked as an assistant to the zoologist Edmund Beecher Wilson at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

#3593

Sidnie Manton

1902 - 1979 (77 years)

Sidnie Milana Manton was an influential British zoologist. She is known for making advances in the field of functional morphology. She is regarded as being one of the most outstanding zoologists of the twentieth century.

#3594

Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker

Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker

1901 - 1957 (56 years)

Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker was a British phycologist, known for her research on the edible seaweed Porphyra laciniata , which led to a breakthrough for commercial cultivation. Kathleen Drew-Baker's scientific legacy is revered in Japan, where she has been named Mother of the Sea. Her work is celebrated each year on April 14. A monument to her was erected in 1963 at the Sumiyoshi shrine in Uto, Kumamoto, Japan.

#3595

Evelyn M. Anderson

Evelyn M. Anderson

1899 - 1985 (86 years)

Evelyn M. Anderson was an American physiologist and biochemist, most known for her co-discovery of adrenocorticotropic hormone in 1934. Background Evelyn Anderson was born in Willmar, Minnesota, to Swedish immigrants parents. She attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she obtained her bachelor's. In 1928, she gained her M.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Medicine. During her time at Berkeley, her research culminated into two papers about vitamin A and nutrition. She continued on to receive her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Montreal in 1934.

#3596

Dora Jacobsohn

1908 - 1983 (75 years)

Dora Elisabeth Jacobsohn was a German-Swedish physiologist and endocrinologist. Considered one of the early pioneers of the field of neuroendocrinology, she is best known for her work with Geoffrey Harris showing that the anterior pituitary gland is controlled by the hypothalamus via the hypophyseal portal system.

#3597

Mary Belle Allen

1922 - 1973 (51 years)

Mary Belle Allen was an American botanist, chemist, mycologist, algologist, and plant pathologist, and a pioneer of biochemical microbiology. With Daniel I. Arnon and F. Robert Whatley, she did breakthrough research discovering and demonstrating the role of chloroplasts in photosynthesis. In 1962 she received the Darbaker Prize from the Botanical Society of America for her work on microbial algae. In 1967 she was nominated jointly with Arnon and Whatley for a Nobel Prize.

#3598

Silvia Zenari

1895 - 1956 (61 years)

Silvia Zenari was an Italian geologist and botanist. Zenari was born in Udine, Italy and studied at the University of Padua, graduating in 1918. While working for the Istituto di Geologia, Zenari studied the Dolomites in Belluno, Cadore, and Comelico between 1930 and 1950, eventually turning her focus on botany as well as geology. She was the first to complete a study on the ecology of plant life at high elevations, primarily in the Sexten Dolomites range. She later moved on to studying the Schiara range, including Monte Serva. Her research included a statistical analysis of plants at various elevations, which explained the distribution of various species.

#3599

Mary Alice McWhinnie

Mary Alice McWhinnie

1922 - 1980 (58 years)

Mary Alice McWhinnie was an American biologist, professor at DePaul University and an authority on krill. From Chicago, Illinois, she was the first woman to sail for two months in Antarctic waters aboard the NSF's research vessel, USNS Eltanin. The National Science Foundation eventually allowed her to winter over at McMurdo Station and in 1974, she became the first American woman to serve as chief scientist at an Antarctic research station.

#3600

Eeva Jalavisto

1909 - 1966 (57 years)

Eeva Jalavisto was a Finnish Professor of physiology and an influential researcher and policy maker in the areas of health and social care of the elderly as well as wider gerontology. Early life and education Born in Kerimäki to Chief Physician Dr and Ines Meurman, Eeva Elmgren completed her secondary education at the Helsingin Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu, graduating in 1927.

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