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,
#3701
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.
Go to Profile#3702
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.
Go to Profile#3703
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.
Go to Profile#3704
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.
Go to Profile#3705
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.
Go to Profile#3706
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.
Go to Profile#3707
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.
Go to Profile#3708
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.
Go to Profile#3710
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.
Go to Profile#3713
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.
Go to Profile#3714
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.
Go to Profile#3716
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.
Go to Profile#3717
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.
Go to Profile#3723
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.
Go to Profile#3724
Chiara Cirelli
#3725
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...
Go to Profile#3726
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.
Go to Profile#3727
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.
Go to Profile#3728
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.
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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...
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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...
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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.
Go to Profile#3732
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.
Go to Profile#3741
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.
Go to Profile#3744
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.
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Caroline Thomas Rumbold
1877 - 1949 (72 years)
Caroline Thomas Rumbold was an American botanist. She specialized in forest pathology. Her researches focused on “fungus diseases of trees and blue stain of wood.” Biography Born on July 22, 1877, in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, Caroline Thomas Rumbold was the daughter of Thomas Frasier Rumbold and Charlotte E. Ledengerber. In 1901 she graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts. She got both the master's degree and the doctorate from the Washington University in St. Louis.
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Mary Foster
1865 - 1960 (95 years)
Mary Louise Foster was an American biochemist, research chemist and educator. Education Mary Louise Foster was born on April 20, 1865, in Melrose, Massachusetts. Between the years of 1878–1883, she attended the Girls' Latin School in Boston, Massachusetts, and later went on to study Classics at Smith College from 1888 to 1891. After her graduation, Foster taught Chemistry and Physics at West Roxbury High School while enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston . In 1912, she received her master's degree from Smith, and two years later earned her PhD from the University of Chicago.
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Harriet George Barclay
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Harriet George Barclay was an American botanist, plant ecologist, nature conservationist, and artist. Biography Barclay was a professor at the University of Tulsa. She later became Chair of the Botany Department in 1953.
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Evelyn Butler Tilden
1891 - 1983 (92 years)
Evelyn Butler Tilden was an American microbiologist who researched carbohydrates and bacteria in saliva at National Institutes of Health and Northwestern University Dental School. She later served as head of laboratories at Brookfield Zoo.
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Winifred B. Chase
1877 - 1949 (72 years)
Ethel Winifred Bennett Chase was an American botanist, a professor of botany and the dean of women at what is now Wayne State University. Chase was a member of a South Pacific botanical expedition led by Josephine E. Tilden in 1909–1910 and collected scientifically significant botanical specimens during that expedition. She was an active member of both Delta Delta Delta and the P.E.O Sisterhood and served in various administrative positions with both organisations.
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Jennie L. S. Simpson
1894 - 1977 (83 years)
Jennie Laura Symons Simpson was a Canadian-American botanist and geneticist. Between 1929 and 1962, she was the professor of botany at Hunter College. Most of her research activities were focused on marine algae.
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