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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,

#3601

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.

#3602

Mary Alice Willcox

1856 - 1953 (97 years)

Mary Alice Willcox was an American zoologist and professor at Wellesley College. Early life and education In 1856, Mary was born in Kennebunk, Maine, the eldest of three children of the congregational minister William H. Willcox and his wife Annie Holmes née Goodenow. Theirs was a distinguished family in Maine; her great grandfather, John Holmes, was one of the state's first senators, while her grandfather, Daniel Goodenow, was justice of the Supreme Court of Maine. Her brother, Walter Francis Willcox, became professor of economics and statistics at Cornell University.

#3603

Chiara Cirelli

#3604

Wilmatte Porter Cockerell

Wilmatte Porter Cockerell

1870 - 1957 (87 years)

Wilmatte Porter Cockerell was an American entomologist and high school biology teacher who discovered and collected a large number of insect specimens and other organisms. She participated in numerous research and collecting field trips including the Cockerell-Mackie-Ogilvie expedition. She wrote several scientific articles in her own right, co-authored more with her husband, Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell, and assisted him with his prolific scientific output. She discovered and cultivated red sunflowers, eventually selling the seeds to commercial seed companies. Her husband and her entomologi...

#3605

Norah Lillian Penston

1903 - 1974 (71 years)

Norah Lillian Penston was a British botanist and academic administrator. She was principal of Bedford College, University of London, from 1951 to 1964. Early life and education Nora Penston was the daughter of A. J. Penston. She was educated at the Bolton School and St Anne's College, Oxford where she obtained a BA in botany in 1927. She studied under W. O. James, researching the potassium nutrition of potatoes for her DPhil, which she gained in 1930.

#3606

Mary C. Lobban

1922 - 1982 (60 years)

Mary Constance Cecile Lobban was a British physiologist who studied circadian rhythms. Lobban was a Senior Demonstrator in Physiology in the Physiological Laboratory at the University of Cambridge from 1955 to 1959. From 1959 to 1974 she worked at the National Institute for Medical Research's Hampstead laboratories.

#3607

Nellie M. Payne

1900 - 1990 (90 years)

Nellie M. Payne was an American entomologist and agricultural chemist. Her research on insect responses to low temperature had practical agricultural and environmental applications. Early life and education Emily Maria de Cottrell Payne was born in 1900, in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, daughter of James E. Payne Sr. and Mary Emmeline Cottrell Payne. Her father was superintendent of an agricultural station. She had two brothers, Amos and James. She earned a bachelor's and master's degrees in agricultural chemistry and entomology from the Kansas State Agricultural College, and a Ph.D. in 1925 from the University of Minnesota.

#3608

Sally Hughes-Schrader

1895 - 1984 (89 years)

Sally Peris Hughes-Schrader was a professor of zoology at Duke University, 1962–1966. Sally P. Hughes was born in Hubbard, Oregon. Hughes was accepted at Columbia University where she majored in protozoology and obtained her M.A. in 1922, completing her Ph.D. at Columbia in 1924. She taught at Bryn Mawr College and later at Columbia University. She was Professor of Zoology and the head of the Biology Department at Barnard College. Hughes performed the first complete dissection of the cranial nerves of the dogfish and made studies of hapoidy, parthenogenesis, hermaphroditism, and the life cycl...

#3609

Edith Layard Stephens

1884 - 1966 (82 years)

Edith Layard Stephens was a South African botanist, a leading authority on algae and fungi, particularly edible and poisonous mushrooms. Early life and education Stephens was born on December 6, 1884 in Cape Town, Cape Colony, as the daughter of Michael Stephens, who was a chief locomotive superintendent of the Cape Government Railways and Annie Hoskyn. In 1901, she matriculated at the Rustenburg School for Girls in Rondebosch, Cape Town. She studied at the South African College and later that year received the Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Cape of Good Hope. In 1906, Stephans...

#3610

Georgina Sweet

1875 - 1946 (71 years)

Georgina Sweet was an Australian zoologist and women's rights activist. She was the first woman to graduate with a Doctor of Science from the University of Melbourne, and was the first female acting professor in an Australian university.

#3611

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.

#3612

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.

#3613

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.

#3614

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.

#3615

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.

#3616

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.

#3617

Elizabeth Ann Bartholomew

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.

#3618

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.

#3619

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.

#3620

Sarah Martha Baker

1887 - 1917 (30 years)

Sarah Martha Baker D.Sc. F.L.S. was an English botanist and ecologist who is remembered for her studies of brown seaweeds and zonation patterns on the seashore. Early life Born in London on 4 June 1887, she was the daughter of Martha Braithwaite Baker and George Samuel Baker and grew up in a Quaker family with two younger brothers, George and Bevan. As well as their main London home the family had a country house at Mersea Island where Baker first took an interest in seaweed. She is said to have been interested in plants and flowers from an early age. Another interest was art and she studied briefly at the Slade School of Art before moving into science.

#3621

Margaret Sylvia Gilliland

1917 - 1990 (73 years)

Margaret Sylvia Gilliland was an Australian biochemist, academic and anti-nuclear campaiger. The daughter of Robert Dugald Bertie and Kathleen Crommelin, she was born Margaret Sylvia Bertie in Grenfell, New South Wales; her uncle Charles Henry Bertie was a librarian and historian. She received a BSc in biochemistry from the University of Melbourne. In 1942, she married Alexander Forbes Gilliland ; the couple had three children. Gilliland later worked as a biochemistry demonstrator at the University of Queensland where she was also an active member of the Queensland Association of University Women.

#3622

Jean Broadhurst

1873 - 1954 (81 years)

Jean Alice Broadhurst was an American educator, botanist and bacteriologist, known for her work in detecting the measles virus. Career Broadhurst graduated from New Jersey State Normal School in 1892; thereafter joining the school's faculty. She studied at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City; taught in the department of botany and zoology at Barnard College; and in 1906 joined the Teachers College, Columbia University faculty. Broadhurst earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1914, and retired as emerita professor at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1939.

#3623

Harriet Richardson

Harriet Richardson

1874 - 1958 (84 years)

Harriet Richardson Searle was an American carcinologist. She was known as the first lady of isopods and was one of the first female carcinologists, with only Mary Jane Rathbun before her. Biography Richardson was born on May 9, 1874, in Washington, D.C., to Charles and Charlotte Ann Richardson. She attended the Friends School and Mount Vernon Seminary in Washington before attending Vassar College - where she became interested in biology - from which she graduated in 1896 with a BA, and again with a master's degree in zoology in 1901.

#3624

Frances Garnet Wolseley, 2nd Viscountess Wolseley

1872 - 1936 (64 years)

Frances Garnet Wolseley, 2nd Viscountess Wolseley was an English gardening author and instructor. Her Glynde College for Lady Gardeners in East Sussex had the patronage of famous gardening names such as Gertrude Jekyll, Ellen Willmott, and William Robinson.

#3625

Winona Hazel Welch

1896 - 1990 (94 years)

Winona Hazel Welch was an American bryologist. As a professor at DePauw University, she became the first female head of the botany and bacteriology department at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.

#3626

Marian Irwin Osterhout

Marian Irwin Osterhout

1888 - 1973 (85 years)

Marian Irwin Osterhout , was an American plant physiologist born in Japan. She was the first woman to receive a National Research Council fellowship. Early life and education Marian Irwin was born in Tokyo, the daughter of Iki Takechi Irwin and Robert Walker Irwin . Her mother was a Japanese noblewoman, daughter of a samurai; her father was an American diplomat, the son of William W. Irwin and a direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin. Her older sister Bella Irwin founded a school in Tokyo. Their aunt, Agnes Irwin, was also an educator, the first dean of Radcliffe College.

#3627

Lois Clark

1884 - 1967 (83 years)

Lois Clark was an American botanist, bryologist, and professor who studied plants of the Northwestern United States, particularly the genus Frullania. She taught at the University of Idaho and the University of Washington.

#3628

Bertha Stoneman

Bertha Stoneman

1866 - 1943 (77 years)

Bertha Stoneman was an American-born South African botanist. She was president of Huguenot College from 1921 to 1933, and founder of the South African Association of University Women. Early life and education Bertha Stoneman was born on a farm near Jamestown, New York, the daughter of Byron Stoneman and Mary Jane Markaham Stoneman. Her aunt, Kate Stoneman, was the first woman admitted to the New York State bar, and her uncle George Stoneman was a general in the American Civil War and later governor of California. Bertha Stoneman completed undergraduate and doctoral studies in botany at Cornell University in 1894 and 1896, respectively.

#3629

Dorothy G. Downie

1894 - 1960 (66 years)

Dorothy G. Downie was a Scottish botanist and forester. She is known for her research on the fungal symbionts and nutritional requirements of orchids. Biography Dorothy G. Downie graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1917 with a B.S. in science and in 1919 with a B.S. in forestry. She was the first woman to receive a degree in forestry from the University of Edinburgh. From 1919 to 1920 she studied at Moray House Training College, where she qualified in professional training for teachers. From 1920 to 1925 she worked at the University of Aberdeen as an assistant to William Grant Cra...

#3630

Nina Floy Bracelin

1890 - 1973 (83 years)

Nina Floy Bracelin was a botanist, plant collector, and scientific illustrator. A fuchsia, Fuchsia bracelinae, is named after her. A willow, Salix lesiolepis bracelinae, is named after her. She was given a lifetime membership to the California Academy of Sciences.

#3631

Lydia Shattuck

1822 - 1889 (67 years)

Lydia White Shattuck was an American botanist, naturalist, chemist, and professor at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary . Early life and education Shattuck was born in 1822 in East Landoff , New Hampshire to first cousins Betsey Fletcher and Timothy Shattuck, and she was the only one of their first five children to survive past infancy. When she was a young girl, her mother would take her on excursions through the woods, which inspired a love of nature, particularly wildflowers.

#3632

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 ...

#3633

Doris Mackinnon

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.

#3634

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.

#3635

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...

#3636

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.

#3637

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.

#3638

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.

#3639

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.

#3640

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.

#3641

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

#3642

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.

#3643

Maria Isabel Hylton Scott

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.

#3644

Cornelia Mitchell Downs

1892 - 1987 (95 years)

Cornelia "Cora" Mitchell Downs was an American microbiologist and journalist who completed extensive work in the areas of immunofluorescence and tularemia research. Downs was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas to parents Lily Louis Campbell Downs and Henry Mitchell Downs. She remained at the University of Kansas for much of her educational, teaching, and research careers.

#3645

Mary Welleck Garretson

Mary Welleck Garretson

1896 - 1971 (75 years)

Mary Welleck Garretson was an American geologist. Garretson had a passion for teaching earlier in her career, obtaining her first job at the Young Men's Christian Association . From 1921 to 1923, she instructed an introductory geology course, which happened to be the first geology course conducted through this institution. Garretson was subsequently employed as a consultant within the fields of paleontology and stratigraphy.

#3646

Kitty Ponse

1897 - 1982 (85 years)

Kitty Ponse was a Swiss zoologist and endocrinologist. She was a professor at the University of Geneva and received the Swiss Otto Naegeli Prize in 1961. Life and career Ponse was born in Sumatra, then part of the Dutch East Indies, to Dutch parents in 1897. At the age of eight she and her family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where she later studied science at the University of Geneva. She completed a doctoral thesis at the University of Geneva in 1922 that focused on embryological development. While the focus of her earlier research and publications was pure zoology, including tail regenerat...

#3647

Helen Jean Brown

1903 - 1982 (79 years)

Dr. Helen Jean Bromley was an American botanist and phycologist noted for her study of the algal family Vaucheriaceae. She earned her PhD from Ohio State University, in 1929. She published using her maiden name, and served as both an instructor of botany and registrar at the University of Connecticut. She was married to entomologist Stanley Willard Bromley.

#3648

Helena Krzemieniewska

1878 - 1966 (88 years)

Helena Krzemieniewska was a Polish botanist and microbiologist, noted for studying myxobacteria and myxophyta in soil. Works

#3649

Regina Kapeller-Adler

1900 - 1991 (91 years)

Regina Kapeller-Adler, born Regina Kapeller, was an Austrian biochemist who, in 1934, devised an innovative test for early pregnancy based on the detection of histidine in urine. As a Jew, she was forced to leave Austria following the country's annexation into Nazi Germany in the Anschluss and went to work with the noted geneticist Francis Crew at the Institute of Animal Genetics at the University of Edinburgh.

#3650

Kathleen Sampson

1892 - 1980 (88 years)

Kathleen Sampson was an English mycologist and plant pathologist, with a focus in herbage crops and cereal diseases. She was a leading authority on smut fungi growing in the British Isles. Early life Sampson was born on 23 November 1892 in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. She received her Bachelor of Science from Royal Holloway College, University of London in 1914. During her study Sampson was awarded the London University Gilchrist Scholarship for Women in 1913, and the Driver Scholarship for Botany in 1914 as well as being awarded the Driver essay prize in 1914. She graduated with her Masters in ...

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