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.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential female people in Biology,
#3651
Grunya Sukhareva
1891 - 1981 (90 years)
Grunya Yefimovna Sukhareva was a Soviet child psychiatrist. Biography Sukhareva was born in Kyiv to the Jewish family of Chaim Faitelevich and Rachil Iosifovna Sukhareva. Between 1917 and 1921, she worked in a psychiatric hospital in Kyiv. From 1921, she worked in Moscow, and from 1933 to 1935 she was leading the department of Psychiatry in Kharkiv University .
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Tilly Edinger
1897 - 1967 (70 years)
Johanna Gabrielle Ottilie "Tilly" Edinger was a German-American paleontologist and the founder of paleoneurology. Personal life Early life Tilly Edinger was born to a wealthy Jewish family in 1897. Her father, Ludwig Edinger, founded Frankfurt's first neurological research institute, providing Edinger with multiple contacts in the scientific community that helped drive her career. She was the youngest of three siblings. Her brother Fritz was killed during the Holocaust and her sister Dr. Dora Lipschitz emigrated to the United States. As a teenager, Edinger began to lose her hearing. She required hearing aids, and as an adult she was completely deaf and could not hear without them.
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Frieda Robscheit-Robbins
1888 - 1973 (85 years)
Frieda S. Robscheit-Robbins was a German-born American pathologist who worked closely with George Hoyt Whipple, conducting research into the use of liver tissue in treatment of pernicious anaemia, co-authoring 21 papers between 1925 and 1930. Whipple received a Nobel Prize in 1934 in recognition of this work, but Robscheit-Robbins was not recognized in this award, although Whipple did share the prize money with her. Had she won the Nobel Prize alongside Whipple, Robscheit-Robbins would have been the second woman after Marie Curie to win the prestigious international award, and the first American woman to do so.
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Mieko Kamiya
1914 - 1979 (65 years)
Mieko Kamiya was a Japanese psychiatrist who treated leprosy patients at Nagashima Aiseien Sanatorium. She was known for translating books on philosophy. She worked as a medical doctor in the Department of Psychiatry at Tokyo University following World War II. She was said to have greatly helped the Ministry of Education and the General Headquarters, where the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers stayed, in her role as an English-speaking secretary, and served as an adviser to Empress Michiko. She wrote many books as a highly educated, multi-lingual person; one of her books, titled On the Me...
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Rosalind Pitt-Rivers
1907 - 1990 (83 years)
Rosalind Venetia Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers FRS was a British biochemist. She became the second president of the European Thyroid Association in 1971; she succeeded Jean Roche and was followed by Jack Gross in this position, all three names inextricably linked with the discovery of the thyroid hormone triiodothyronine .
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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.
Go to Profile#3657
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.
Go to Profile#3658
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.
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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.
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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.
Go to Profile#3661
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.
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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.
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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.
Go to Profile#3664
Elizabeth Blackwell
1707 - 1758 (51 years)
Elizabeth Blackwell was a botanical illustrator and author who was best known as both the artist and engraver for the plates of "A Curious Herbal", published between 1737 and 1739. The book illustrated medicinal plants, and was designed as a reference work for the use of physicians and apothecaries.
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Katharine Bishop
1889 - 1975 (86 years)
Katharine Julia Scott Bishop was a trained anatomist, medical physician, researcher and educator best known for co-discovering Vitamin E. Early life In 1889, Bishop was born in New York as Katharine Scott, to Walter and Katherine Emma Scott. She attended the Somerville High School for high school and later received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College in 1910. After taking premedical courses at Radcliffe College, Bishop went on to graduate from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and earned her medical degree in 1915.
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Edith Banfield Jackson
1895 - 1977 (82 years)
Edith Banfield Jackson was a child psychiatrist who developed the rooming-in model of maternal and infant care. Jackson was professor in pediatrics and psychology at the Yale School of Medicine from 1936 to 1959. She directed the Yale Rooming-in Research Project at Grace-New Haven Community Hospital from 1946 to 1953. Upon retiring from Yale, Jackson moved to Colorado, where she directed the Rooming-in Unit at Colorado General Hospital from 1962 to 1970.
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Miriam Elizabeth Simpson
1894 - 1991 (97 years)
Miriam Elizabeth Simpson was an American scientist who in 1921 earned the first Ph.D. in anatomy conferred from the University of California. Two years later, she was awarded Doctor of Medicine from Johns Hopkins University .
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Esther Killick
1902 - 1960 (58 years)
Esther Margaret Killick was an English physiologist who was a professor of physiology at the London School of Medicine for Women from 1941 until her death in 1960. Her main research interests lay in respiratory physiology and carbon monoxide poisoning.
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Hattie Alexander
1901 - 1968 (67 years)
Hattie Elizabeth Alexander was an American pediatrician and microbiologist. She earned her M.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1930 and continued her research and medical career at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. Alexander became the lead microbiologist and the head of the bacterial infections program at Columbia-Presbyterian. She occupied many prestigious positions at Columbia University and was well honored even after her death from liver cancer in 1968. Alexander is known for her development of the first effective remedies for Haemophilus influenzae infection, as well as being one of the first scientists to identify and study antibiotic resistance.
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Wanda Zabłocka
1900 - 1978 (78 years)
Wanda Zabłocka was a Polish botanist, phytopathologist and mycologist. She was a professor at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń . Zabłocka was the author of mycology and phytopathology works, including mycorrhiza of Viola . She is also the author of several books about fungi for the general public.
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Fahire Battalgil
1902 - 1948 (46 years)
Fahire Battalgil was a Turkish ichthyologist who was one of the first women to be appointed as a professor at a university in Turkey. Name Battalgil was known as Fahire Akim Hanim during the early part of her life. The surname Battalgil was adopted by her family to comply with the Republic of Turkey's 1934 Surname Law and the spelling of this was changed to Battalgazi from 1943.
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Eleanor Anne Ormerod
1828 - 1901 (73 years)
Eleanor Anne Ormerod was a pioneer English entomologist. Based on her studies in agriculture, she became one of the first to define the field of agricultural entomology. She published an influential series of articles on useful insects and pests in the Gardeners' Chronicle and the Agricultural Gazette along with annual reports from 1877 to 1900. These annual reports were produced by summarizing information provided by her network of correspondents from across Britain. Belonging to the landed gentry, she worked as an honorary consulting entomologist with the Royal Agricultural Society of England and received no pay for any of her work.
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Clara Eaton Cummings
1855 - 1906 (51 years)
Clara Eaton Cummings was an American cryptogamic botanist and Hunnewell Professor of Cryptogamic Botany at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Life and education Cummings was born in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on July 13, 1855 to Noah Conner and Elmira George Cummings. In 1876, she enrolled at the women's liberal arts college Wellesley, only one year after the opening of the institution.
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Marie Agnes Hinrichs
1892 - 1979 (87 years)
Marie Agnes Hinrichs Ph.D., M.D. was an American scientist specializing in zoology, physiology, and physical health. She earned a Ph.D. in zoology in 1923, conferred from the University of Chicago. She taught at the University of Chicago, before moving on to direct departments at Southern Illinois University and University of Illinois. She became known for her research into the effects of both ultraviolet radiation and visible radiation on living matter, with particular interest in the effects on developing embryos.
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Ada Hayden
1884 - 1950 (66 years)
Ada Hayden was an American botanist, educator, and preservationist. She was the curator of the Iowa State University Herbarium, which was renamed the Ada Hayden Herbarium in her honour in 1988. During her career, she added more than 40,000 specimens to the herbarium. Her studies and conservation work were particularly important in ensuring the preservation of the tallgrass prairie.
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Nora Lilian Alcock
1874 - 1972 (98 years)
Nora Lilian Alcock, also known as Nora Lilian Lepart and Nora Lilian Leopard, was a pioneer in the field of plant pathology and the first government-appointed plant pathologist in Scotland. Life Nora Lilian Scott was born in 1874, the daughter of Sir John Scott, the Judicial Advisor to the Khedive of Egypt, and Edgeworth Leonora Hill. It appears she had no formal higher education. She married Nathaniel Henry Alcock, a radiologist, in 1905 and moved to Canada. When he died of cancer in 1913, she and her four children returned to Britain.
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Una Lucy Fielding
1888 - 1969 (81 years)
Una Lucy Fielding was an Australian neuroanatomist. Early life Una Fielding was born in Wellington, New South Wales to Anglican clergyman and author Rev. Sydney Glanville Fielding and his wife Lucy Frances . The eldest of six children, Una attended a private school in Windsor before starting at St Catherine's School, Waverley in 1900. In 1907 she won a bursary to the University of Sydney; after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1910 she spent six years teaching French and English.
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Marie Poland Fish
1902 - 1989 (87 years)
Marie "Bobbie" Dennis Poland Fish was an American oceanographer and marine biologist known for her bioacoustics research and the finding of eel eggs in the Sargasso Sea. Her research on underwater sound detection allowed the United States Navy to distinguish enemy submarines from wildlife. The United States Navy awarded her its highest civilian award, the Distinguished Service Medal, in 1966 to recognize her contributions during her twenty-two years leading the "Underwater Sound of Biological Origin" project for the Office of Naval Research. She also founded the Narragansett Marine Laboratory with her husband Charles.
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Michalina Stefanowska
1855 - 1942 (87 years)
Michalina Stefanowska was a Polish neurophysiologist and biologist. She was a member of the Poznań Society of Friends of Sciences and the second woman to become a member of the Polish Academy of Learning.
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Inez Whipple Wilder
1871 - 1929 (58 years)
Inez Whipple Wilder , born Inez Luanne Whipple, was an American herpetologist and anatomist, affiliated with Smith College from 1902 until her death. She made notable contributions to the study of fingerprints and the biology of salamanders.
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Emily Lovira Gregory
1841 - 1897 (56 years)
Emily Lovira Gregory was an American botanist born in Portage, New York. She began her educational career by receiving her Bachelor's of Arts from Cornell University in 1881, later earning a Ph.D. at the University of Zurich. This made her one of the first American women to earn a doctoral degree from a university in Europe. Gregory often found it difficult to find paid academic positions. She often would take on the unpaid positions because she could support herself. From 1890 to 1895 at the University of Pennsylvania and Barnard College she worked as a teaching fellow and lecturer respectively.
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Helen Chambers
1879 - 1935 (56 years)
Helen Chambers CBE was a British pathologist and cancer expert whose findings on radium were essential in the fight against cervical cancer. Early life Chambers was born in Bombay, India, to Frederick Chambers. Her father was a member of the Indian Civil Service before returning the family back to Britain.
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Mary Isabel McCracken
1866 - 1955 (89 years)
Mary Isabel McCracken was an American entomologist, researcher and teacher. Career McCracken was born in Oakland, California in 1866. She began her teaching career at Oakland’s public schools. After a decade of teaching and at the age of 34 she enrolled at Stanford University.
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Susan Hallowell
1835 - 1911 (76 years)
Susan Hallowell was an American botanist and Professor of Botany at Wellesley College. She was a teacher and mentor of botanist Margaret Clay Ferguson. Life Hallowell began a teaching career shortly after graduating from Colby College.
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Carmel Humphries
1909 - 1986 (77 years)
Carmel Humphries MRIA B.Sc. M.Sc. PhD D.Sc. was an Irish zoologist, specialist in fresh water Chironomidae. She was the first female professor of zoology and head of department in Ireland, and devised a technique for the identification of chironomid flies that is still employed today.
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Lydia DeWitt
1859 - 1928 (69 years)
Lydia Maria DeWitt was an American pathologist and anatomist. Early life and education Lydia Maria Adams was born in Flint, Michigan to Oscar and Elizabeth Adams, the second of three children. Her father was an attorney. Elizabeth died when Lydia was five, leaving her sister, who later married Oscar, to raise Lydia and her siblings.
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Alice Haskins
1880 - 1971 (91 years)
Alice Crane Haskins Swingle was an American government botanist. With her husband, botanist Deane Bret Swingle , she co-authored the 1928 book A Textbook of Systematic Botany. Life and career Haskins was born on 24 April 1880, in Acton, Massachusetts to Helen A. Crane and John R. Haskins. She graduated with a bachelor's degree from Smith College in 1903. Haskins worked as a research assistant in the Plant Pathology Laboratory of the United States Department of Agriculture from 1903 to 1906.
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Elsie M. Burrows
1913 - 1986 (73 years)
Elsie May Burrows was an English botanist who made significant contributions to British postwar phycology. Her primary area of research was macroalgal ecology, focusing particularly on Fucus, a genus of brown algae, and Chlorophyta, a division of the green algae.
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Cornelia Channing
1938 - 1985 (47 years)
Cornelia "Nina" Channing was an American professor of physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Her research focused on endocrinology and fertility; along with longtime collaborators Neena Schwartz and Darrell Ward, she was involved in the discovery of hormones involved in regulating the female reproductive cycle. She died of breast cancer in 1985.
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Anna Kharadze
1905 - 1971 (66 years)
Anna Kharadze was a Soviet Georgian biologist, systematist, florist, botanist-geographer, collector, a specialist in the flora of Georgia and the Caucasus as a whole. Early life and education Anna Kharadze was born in the city of Elizavetpole in the family of a school teacher of natural sciences. She received her secondary education at a technical school in Tbilisi and then entered the biological department of the natural faculty of Tbilisi State University, from which she graduated in 1927.
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Käthe Hoffmann
1883 - Present (143 years)
Käthe Hoffmann was a German botanist who described many plant species in New Guinea and South East Asia including Annesijoa novoguineensis. She was a professor at Breslau, German Empire, and made a significant contribution to botany. In one study, she was found to have co-authored or authored 354 land plant species, the sixth-highest number authored by any female scientist. , Plants of the World Online lists 439 accepted genera and species which include Käthe Hoffmann in the authority, in some capacity.
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Augusta Vera Duthie
1881 - 1963 (82 years)
Augusta Vera Duthie was a South African botanist who studied the plants of the Western Cape and was a popular teacher who lectured on cryptogamic botany. She was the first university lecturer in botany who was entirely educated in South Africa.
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Erna Walter
1893 - 1992 (99 years)
Erna Walter was a German botanist, ecologist, botanical collector and bryologist. Life and work The daughter of botanist Heinrich Schenck, Erna studied botany, physics and chemistry in Darmstadt and Heidelberg. She received her doctorate in 1918 under the direction of botanist Georg Albrecht Klebs at the University of Heidelberg. Her dissertation was titled: Bacteriocine von Clostridium perfringens. Walter then worked as a scientific assistant at the Botanical Institute of the University of Heidelberg with Ludwig Jost and as an intern at the Biological Reich Institute in Berlin-Dahlem. She wa...
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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 .
Go to Profile#3695
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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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.
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Chiara Cirelli
#3700
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...
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