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,
#3801
Margaret Anderson
1900 - 1997 (97 years)
Margaret Dampier Anderson was a British biochemist and scientific indexer. She published four scientific articles in the 1920s before marrying in 1927 and began indexing books beginning in 1960. Life Margaret Whetham was born on 21 April 1900, the daughter of William Cecil Dampier Whetham, a Cambridge-educated scientist and agricultural academic, and his wife Catherine Durning Holt, a daughter of Liverpool merchant Robert Durning Holt who had also pursued an education at Cambridge. One of her many great aunts was social reformer Beatrice Webb. She had one brother and four sisters, including Edith Holt Whetham.
Go to Profile#3802
Sarah D. Allen Oren Haynes
1836 - 1907 (71 years)
Sarah D. Allen Oren Haynes was an American librarian, mathematician, and botanist who became the first woman to become state librarian of Indiana and the first woman on the faculty of Purdue University.
Go to Profile#3803
Ernestine Hogan Basham Thurman
1920 - 1987 (67 years)
Ernestine Hogan Basham Thurman was an American entomologist and researcher, focusing on mosquitoes and vector control. In 1951 she was the first woman sent by the United States to Thailand to establish a malaria control program.
Go to Profile#3804
Harriette Cushman
1890 - 1978 (88 years)
Harriette Eliza Cushman was the first female Extension Service poultry specialist in the United States, a lifelong supporter of the arts, an environmental advocate, and an honorary member of the Blackfoot tribe.
Go to Profile#3805
Ethel Katherine Crum
1886 - 1943 (57 years)
Ethel Katherine Crum was an American botanist, noted for collecting and studying California flora, as well as serving as assistant curator of the University of California Herbarium. She discovered and formally described at least 13 species and varieties of plants.
Go to Profile#3806
Lucy Mabel Hall-Brown
1843 - 1907 (64 years)
Lucy M. Hall-Brown was an American physician and writer. She was a general practitioner and a physician at the Sherborn Reformatory for Women, now the Massachusetts Correctional Instituion – Framingham.
Go to Profile#3807
Constance Margaret Eardley
1910 - 1978 (68 years)
Constance Margaret Eardley was an Australian systematic botanist, lecturer and curator. She was the first woman appointed to the Council of the Royal Society of South Australia. Early life and education Constance Margaret Eardley was born in Fullarton, South Australia on 6 September 1910. Her mother was an historian and her father, Frederick William Eardley , was an accountant who served as registrar at the University of Adelaide. She completed her secondary education at Walford Anglican School for Girls, receiving honours in the leaving certificate. She was later president of its alumni asso...
Go to Profile#3808
Flora Murray
1896 - 1968 (72 years)
Flora Buchan Murray was a New Zealand botanist, and was the second woman appointed as permanent staff at Canterbury University College. Early life and education Flora Buchan Murray was born in New Zealand on 1 August 1896 to parents the Reverend Charles and Grace Jane Murray. She grew up in Carterton, near Wellington, and was educated at Christchurch Girls' High School. She enrolled at Canterbury University College in 1915, and was the winner of the prize in zoology for 1916–1917. Murray graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1920, and followed this with an MA with first class Honours in Botany in 1921.
Go to Profile#3809
Elizabeth B. Bryant
1875 - 1953 (78 years)
Elizabeth Bangs Bryant was an American arachnologist. She worked at the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was a close acquaintance of James Henry Emerton. She is best known for her studies of the spiders of New England and the Caribbean.
Go to Profile#3810
Eugénie Henderson
1914 - 1989 (75 years)
Eugénie Jane Andrina Henderson was a British linguist and academic, specialising in phonetics. From 1964 to 1982, she was Professor of Phonetics at the University of London. She served as Chair of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain from 1977 to 1980, and President of the Philological Society from 1984 to 1988.
Go to Profile#3811
Janaki Ammal
1897 - 1984 (87 years)
Edavalath Kakkat Janaki Ammal was an Indian botanist who worked on plant breeding, cytogenetics and phytogeography. Her most notable work involved studies on sugarcane and the eggplant . She also worked on the cytogenetics of a range of plants and co-authored the Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants with C.D. Darlington. She took an interest in ethnobotany and plants of medicinal and economic value from the rain forests of Kerala, India. She was awarded Padma Shri by the then prime minister of India in 1977.
Go to Profile#3812
Margaret Mary Smith
1916 - 1987 (71 years)
Margaret Mary Smith was born on 26 September 1916 in Indwe, Cape Province, South Africa, a small village on the border of the Transkei. She was an ichthyologist, accomplished fish illustrator, and an academic.
Go to Profile#3813
Mabel Rayner
1890 - 1948 (58 years)
Mabel Mary Cheveley Rayner was an English botanist specialising in mycology. She published books and articles on plant physiology and was one of the first researchers to propose that mycorrhizal interactions could both help and harm plants.
Go to Profile#3814
Abby Howe Turner
1875 - 1957 (82 years)
Abby Howe Turner was a noted professor of physiology and zoology who founded the department of physiology at Mount Holyoke College. She specialized in colloid osmotic pressure and circulatory reactions to gravity.
Go to Profile#3815
Helen Lee Gruehl
1902 - 1983 (81 years)
Helen Lee Gruehl Aikman was an American immunologist. Early life and education Gruehl was born in Passaic, New Jersey, the daughter of Edward Charles Gruehl and Susan Ramsay Mason Gruehl. Her father was manager of a rubber factory; her mother was a teacher and clubwoman. Gruehl graduated from Passaic High School in 1920, and from Mount Holyoke College in 1924. Her major was chemistry, and her minor was in mathematics; she was also known as a dancer during her college years.
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Mary Shaw Shorb
1907 - 1990 (83 years)
Mary Shaw Shorb , a research scientist, was best known for the development of a bacteriological assay procedure for the chemical compound now known as Vitamin B12. Early years Mary Shaw was born on January 7, 1907, in Wahpeton, North Dakota, about forty miles south of Fargo. Her parents were Mary McKean and Ernest Shaw. The family moved to Caldwell, Idaho when Mary was three years old. She developed an early interest in biology through a neighbor and family friend, Dr. William Judson Boone. Founder and first President of the College of Idaho, Dr. Boone was a well-known botanist, and taught biology at the College.
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Ruth Bleier
1923 - 1988 (65 years)
Ruth Harriet Bleier was an American neurophysiologist who is also one of the first feminist scholars to explore how gender biases have shaped biology. Her career consisted of combining her academic interests with her commitment to social justice for women and the lower-class.
Go to Profile#3818
Marie Stopes
1880 - 1958 (78 years)
Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes was a British author, palaeobotanist and campaigner for eugenics and women's rights. She made significant contributions to plant paleontology and coal classification, and was the first female academic on the faculty of the University of Manchester. With her second husband, Humphrey Verdon Roe, Stopes founded the first birth control clinic in Britain. Stopes edited the newsletter Birth Control News, which gave explicit practical advice. Her sex manual Married Love was controversial and influential, and brought the subject of birth control into wide public discourse.
Go to Profile#3819
Rhoda Erdmann
1870 - 1935 (65 years)
Rhoda Erdmann was a German cell biologist. Working in the early 1900s, Erdmann was a pioneer of cellular biology and one of few women in her field at the time. Erdmann's work centered around the reproduction of protozoa, with a particular interest in tissue culture and in vitro cellular reproduction. Her work as a protozoologist earned her a graduate student lecturing position at Yale University, though her time in America was cut short by anti-German sentiment surrounding World War I. After a forcible incarceration and then deportation in 1919, Erdmann took a research position at the Institute for Cancer Research at the Charité Hospital of the Friedrich‐Wilhelms University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#3820
Ann Haven Morgan
1882 - 1966 (84 years)
Ann Haven Morgan was an American zoologist and ecologist. Biography One of three children of Stanley G. Morgan and Julia A. Douglass Morgan, Anna Morgan was born in Waterford, Connecticut and attended Williams Memorial Institute in New London, Connecticut. In 1902, Anna joined Wellesley College then transferred to Cornell University. After receiving a B.A in 1906, she worked as an assistant and instructor for the Mount Holyoke College department of zoology until 1909. At Cornell University, she was awarded a Ph.D. in 1912 with a dissertation titled, A Contribution to the Biology of the May-fly, after which she became a professor at Mount Holyoke College.
Go to Profile#3821
Harriet Robinson
Harriet Latham Robinson is an American vaccine researcher who is founder and Chief Scientific Officer Emeritus at GeoVax. She is the former Chief of Microbiology and Immunology at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Microbiology at Emory University. Her research considered HIV vaccine development. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#3822
Liliana Lubińska
1904 - 1990 (86 years)
Liliana Lubińska was a Polish neuroscientist known for her research on the peripheral nervous system and her discovery of bidirectional axoplasmic transport. She and her husband Jerzy Konorski founded the Department of Neurophysiology at the Nencki Institution in 1946
Go to Profile#3823
Nancy Sullivan
Nancy Jean Sullivan is an American cell biologist researching filovirus immunology and vaccine development. She is a senior investigator and chief of the biodefense research section at the Vaccine Research Center. Her team discovered the monoclonal antibody, mAb114.
Go to Profile#3824
Myra Keen
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Angeline Myra Keen was an American malacologist and invertebrate paleontologist. She was an expert on the evolution of marine mollusks. With a PhD in psychology. Keen went from being a volunteer, identifying shells at Stanford, and having no formal training in biology or geology, to being one of the world's foremost malacologists. She was called the "First Lady of Malacology".
Go to Profile#3825
Winifred Cullis
1875 - 1956 (81 years)
Winifred Cullis was a physiologist and academic, and the first woman to hold a professorial chair at a medical school. Early life and education Born in Gloucester, Winifred was the youngest daughter of the six children of Frederick John and Louisa Cullis. Her brother Cuthbert Edmund Cullis became a mathematician. The family moved to Birmingham in 1880. She was initially educated at a middle school, the Summer Hill School, and at 16 transferred to the associated King Edward VI High School for Girls, Birmingham and took extra science classes at Mason College.
Go to Profile#3826
Anna Baetjer
1899 - 1984 (85 years)
Anna Medora Baetjer was an American physiologist and toxicologist, known for her research into the health effects of industrial work on women and for her discovery of the carcinogenic properties of chromium.
Go to Profile#3827
Helen Parsons
1886 - 1977 (91 years)
Helen Tracy Parsons was an American biochemist and nutritionist chiefly known for her early work in vitamin B. Parsons developed an interest in biochemistry and nutrition at the University of Wisconsin-Madision, where she was a graduate student under Elmer McCollum. Parsons spent most of her own scientific career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in their Home Economics department. After her retirement, she was named a fellow of the American Institute of Nutrition in 1959, one of only three women to be so honored. Parsons is well known for her early work on eggs, which was critical to the discovery of biotin and avidin in 1940.
Go to Profile#3828
Chi Che Wang
1894 - 1979 (85 years)
Chi Che Wang , also known as Wang Chi-Lian, was a Chinese biochemist and college professor. Wang was one of the first Chinese women to make a career in American higher education and scientific research.
Go to Profile#3829
Ragna Rask-Nielsen
1900 - 1998 (98 years)
Ragna Marie Jenny Rask-Nielsen née Jensen was a Danish biochemist and medical researcher. After she earned a PhD with a dissertation on the development of carcinogenic tumors in mice in 1948, she carried out laboratory-based studies on antibody-producing tumors. In 1963, her groundbreaking work on viruses causing cancerous lymphoma was published in the journal Nature. When she died at the age of 97, she left her large fortune to a research foundation.
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Marjorie Roloff Stetten
1916 - 1983 (67 years)
Marjorie Roloff Stetten was an American biochemist whose carbohydrate metabolism research led to the advancements in biomedical knowledge of enzymes and biosynthesis and the discovery of AICA ribonucleotide. During her career, she was an investigator at the National Institutes of Health and a research professor of experimental medicine at Rutgers Medical School.
Go to Profile#3831
Marion Webster
1921 - 1985 (64 years)
Marion Elizabeth Webster-Bukovsky was a Canadian-American biochemist who was the first to isolate the Vi antigen of typhoid and to determine its structure. She published extensively on the kinin–kallikrein system while at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Webster was an advocate for women in science and served as president of the Association for Women in Science and Graduate Women in Science.
Go to Profile#3832
Rosalind Wulzen
1886 - Present (140 years)
Rosalind Wulzen was an American physiologist, known for her discovery of the "Anti-Stiffness Factor," or "Wulzen Factor." Born in Oakland, California, Wulzen attended the University of California Berkeley for her bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees.
Go to Profile#3833
Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks
1888 - 1981 (93 years)
Matilda Moldenhauer Brooks was a cellular biologist best known for her 1932 discovery that the staining compound methylene blue is an antidote to carbon monoxide and cyanide poisoning. She held a PhD in zoology and spent her professional career working as a researcher at the United States Public Health Service and the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#3834
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.
Go to Profile#3835
Katherine Esau
1898 - 1997 (99 years)
Katherine Esau was a pioneering German-American botanist who studied plant anatomy and the effects of viruses. Her books Plant Anatomy and Anatomy of Seed Plants are key texts. In 1989, Esau received the National Medal of Science "In recognition of her distinguished service to the American community of plant biologists, and for the excellence of her pioneering research, both basic and applied, on plant structure and development, which has spanned more than six decades; for her superlative performance as an educator, in the classroom and through her books; for the encouragement and inspira...
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Angélique Arvanitaki
1901 - 1983 (82 years)
Angélique Arvanitaki was a French neurophysiologist who did research on the electrical activity of neurons using the large nerve fibres of several different molluscs. Life Angélique Arvanitaki was of Greek origin and was born in Cairo on 11 July 1901. In 1942, she married Nick Chalazonitis, who was a student in veterinary medicine at the time, and would himself become a neurophysiologist too. Their daughter Alcmene Chalazonitis, born in 1943, later also became a neuroscientist.
Go to Profile#3837
Irene Manton
1904 - 1988 (84 years)
Irene Manton, FRS FLS was a British botanist who was Professor of Botany at the University of Leeds. She was noted for study of ferns and algae. Biography Irene Manton was the daughter of dental surgeon, George Manton and embroideress and designer, and descendant of French aristocracy, Milana Manton . Her first name was originally pronounced and spelled in the French manner; but at 18 she dropped this and opted for "Irene". Her sister was the entomologist Sidnie Manton FRS. She was educated at the Froebel Demonstration School and St. Paul's Girls' School, Hammersmith. While still in school s...
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Louise Pearce
1885 - 1959 (74 years)
Louise Pearce was an American pathologist at the Rockefeller Institute who helped develop a treatment for African sleeping sickness . Sleeping sickness was a fatal epidemic which had devastated areas of Africa, killing two-thirds of the population of the Uganda protectorate between 1900 and 1906 alone. With chemists Walter Abraham Jacobs and Michael Heidelberger and pathologist Wade Hampton Brown, Pearce worked to develop and test arsenic-based drugs for its treatment. In 1920, Louise Pearce traveled to the Belgian Congo where she designed and carried out a drug testing protocol for human trials to establish tryparsamide's safety, effectiveness, and optimum dosage.
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Beatrice M. Sweeney
1914 - 1989 (75 years)
Eleanor Beatrice Marcy "Beazy" Sweeney was an American plant physiologist and a pioneering investigator into circadian rhythms. At the time of her death she was professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she had worked since 1961.
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Elizabeth McCoy
1903 - 1978 (75 years)
Elizabeth McCoy was an American microbiologist and a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Early life Elizabeth McCoy was born in Madison, Wisconsin, February 1, 1903. McCoy’s fascination with microbiology began early on the family farm where she lived with her family. Her parents, Esther Williamson and Cassius James McCoy, both attended college. Her mother was a professor and then an active practicing nurse for six years. McCoy's mother taught her about household hygiene and techniques to best preserve food. Her father was a professor but for health reasons had to retire.
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Dorothy Maud Wrinch
1894 - 1976 (82 years)
Dorothy Maud Wrinch was a mathematician and biochemical theorist best known for her attempt to deduce protein structure using mathematical principles. She was a champion of the controversial 'cyclol' hypothesis for the structure of proteins.
Go to Profile#3842
Maria Zambon
Maria Caterina Zambon FMedSci FRCPath, is a British virologist, director of reference microbiology for Public Health England and a professor. Her main research areas include influenza vaccination and influenza hemagglutination inhibition.
Go to Profile#3843
Helen Margaret Gilkey
1886 - 1972 (86 years)
Helen Margaret Gilkey was an American mycologist and botanist, as well as a botanical illustrator and watercolor artist She was born on March 6, 1886, in Montesano, Washington, and moved to Corvallis, Oregon, with her family in 1903. She died in 1972 at the age of 86.
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Margaret Clay Ferguson
1863 - 1951 (88 years)
Margaret Clay Ferguson was an American botanist best known for advancing scientific education in the field of botany. She also contributed on the life histories of North American pines. Early life and education Ferguson was born in Orleans, New York in 1863 and attended the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York. Ferguson attended Wellesley College, where she graduated in botany and chemistry in 1891, earning a PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1901.
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Elizabeth Eaton Morse
1864 - 1955 (91 years)
Elizabeth Eaton Morse was an American mycologist. Born in Framingham, Massachusetts, she graduated from Ashland, Massachusetts, High School in 1882. For seven years she taught in elementary school before entering Wellesley College, from which she graduated with a diploma from the School of Art in 1891. After twenty years of teaching in the New York City schools Morris High School and Roosevelt High School, she returned to Wellesley College in 1924 and earned a degree in Botany in 1926. Shortly after, she registered as a part-time graduate student in the Department of Botany at the University ...
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Margery C. Carlson
1892 - 1985 (93 years)
Margery Claire Carlson was an American botanist and a professor at Northwestern University. After earning a Ph.D. in botany and becoming the first full-time female professor at Northwestern, she went on a number of international scientific expeditions to Central America in order to collect plant specimens and find new species. Her relationship as a research assistant at the Field Museum of Natural History meant that a majority of her plant collection was donated to the museum and a special botany collection was created for her there. Carlson had a long history of involvement in the conservati...
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Doris Holmes Blake
1892 - 1978 (86 years)
Doris Holmes Blake, née Doris Mildred Holmes , was an American entomologist and scientific illustrator. She was an expert on chrysomelidae . Life Doris Holmes was raised in a middle-class family in Stoughton, Massachusetts. She earned a B.A. from Boston University in 1913 and an M.A. in Zoology and Psychology from Radcliffe College in 1917. While at Boston University she became a member of Alpha Delta Pi. Marrying the botanist and plant taxonomist Sidney Fay Blake in 1918, she worked for the Bureau of Entomology of the United States Department of Agriculture from 1919 to 1928. From 1928 she worked at the Department of Entomology of the United States National Museum.
Go to Profile#3848
Mary Pocock
1886 - 1977 (91 years)
Mary Agard Pocock was a South African phycologist. Biography Born in Rondebosch in 1886 to William Pocock and Elizabeth Dacomb, Mary Pocock attended Bedford High School and Cheltenham Ladies' College. Pocock then attended the University of London where she studied botany, receiving her degree in 1908. Following her degree Pocock taught at girls schools in London and the Cape before continuing her study in 1919; completing an additional honors degree in botany at Cambridge. She was a lecturer at Rhodes University for a year in 1924, a position which she took up occasionally again during her career.
Go to Profile#3849
Edith Marion Patch
1876 - 1954 (78 years)
Edith Marion Patch was an American entomologist and writer. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, she received a degree from the University of Minnesota in 1901 and originally embarked on a career as an English teacher before receiving the opportunity to organize the entomology department at the University of Maine. She became the head of the entomology department in 1904, and, despite misgivings from several male colleagues about having a female department head, she remained in this post until her retirement in 1937. Edith Patch is recognized as the first truly successful professional woman ento...
Go to Profile#3850
Dorothy Day
1896 - Present (130 years)
Dorothy Day was an American plant physiologist. Education and career Dorothy Day received an A.B. degree from Wellesley College in 1919; an M.S. from the University of Wisconsin in 1925; and her Ph.D. in plant physiology from that institution in 1927. She also attended the University of Chicago in 1929 and Cornell University in 1942–1943.
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