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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential female people in Biology,
#451
Irene Tracey
#23936
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Irene Mary Carmel Tracey is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford and former Warden of Merton College, Oxford. She is also Professor of Anaesthetic Neuroscience in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences and formerly Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford. She is a co-founder of the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain , now the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging. Her team’s research is focused on the neuroscience of pain, specifically pain perception and analgesia as well as how anaesthetics produce altered states of consciousness.
Go to Profile#452
Segenet Kelemu
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#37060
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Segenet Kelemu is an Ethiopian scientist, noted for her research as a molecular plant pathologist, and outstanding scientific leadership. For close to three decades, Kelemu and her team's research has contributed to addressing agricultural constraints in Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America.
Go to Profile#453
Anna Akhmanova
#38040
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Anna Sergeevna Akhmanova is a Russian-born professor of Cell Biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She is best known for her research regarding microtubules and the proteins, called TIPs, that stabilize one specific end of the tubules. Among the awards she has won, she was one of the recipients of the 2018 Spinoza Prize, the highest honor for Dutch scientists.
Go to Profile#454
Lynn Riddiford
#65789
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Lynn Moorhead Riddiford is an American entomologist and developmental biologist. She was the first female faculty member in the Harvard Biology Department where she served as an assistant and associate professor. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Washington. In 1997, she was the first awardee of the Recognition Award in Insect Physiology, Biochemistry, and Toxicology from the Entomological Society of America. Riddiford studies the endocrinology of insects, specifically the tobacco hornworm.
Go to Profile#455
Ivet Bahar
#37004
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Ivet Bahar is a Turkish-American computational biologist, currently serving as the Director of the Louis and Beatrice Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, Louis & Beatrice Laufer Endowed Chair and Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the Stony Brook University, School of Medicine. Before joining Stony Brook University, she served as Distinguished Professor, John K. Vries Chair and Founder of the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine , and as Assistant , Associate and Full Professor at the Chemical Engineering Department of Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Go to Profile#456
Judith Lewis Herman
#4121
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Judith Lewis Herman is an American psychiatrist, researcher, teacher, and author who has focused on the understanding and treatment of incest and traumatic stress. Herman is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of Training at the Victims of Violence Program in the Department of Psychiatry at the Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a founding member of the Women's Mental Health Collective.
Go to Profile#457
Patricia DeCoursey
#54578
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Patricia Jackson DeCoursey was a leading researcher in the field of chronobiology. Her research focused on behavioral, physiological, and ecological aspects of mammalian circadian rhythms. She is credited with creating the first Phase Response Curve . PRC’s are used throughout the field today to help illustrate the change of a biological oscillation in response to an external stimulus. She worked as a biology professor at the University of South Carolina from 1967 until her retirement as director of the W. Gordon Belser Arboretum in 2019.
Go to Profile#458
Sampa Das
#45046
Overall Influence
Sampa Das is an Indian biotechnologist, scientist, and an expert on public sector agricultural biotechnology. She is a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences, India . Currently, she is Senior Professor and Head of the Division of Plant Biology at Bose Institute in Kolkata, which is a multi-disciplinary research institution focused on science and technology.
Go to Profile#459
Sandra Steingraber
#21182
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Sandra Steingraber is an American biologist, author, and cancer survivor. Steingraber writes and lectures on the environmentalal factors that contribute to reproductive health problems and environmental links to cancer.
Go to Profile#460
Kornelia Smalla
#59116
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Kornelia Smalla is a chemist and biotechnologist at the Julius Kuehn Institute in Braunschweig and a university lecturer in microbiology at the Technical University of Braunschweig. Life and work After finishing school, Smalla studied chemistry at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg and was awarded a chemistry diploma. She became a scientific assistant at the Institute für Biochemistry in the Medical Faculty of the same university and obtained the qualification Dr. rer nat in Biochemistry in 1985, and professorship with Venia Legendi in microbiology in 1999.
Go to Profile#461
Renee Borges
#58720
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Renee Maria Borges is an Indian evolutionary biologist and professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science. Her work as a scientist has been profiled on India Today. Her research areas are behavioural and sensory ecology with special reference to plant and animal interactions such as figs and fig-wasps. Other areas of research interest include conservation biology and the history and philosophy of science.
Go to Profile#462
Janice E. Clements
#47134
Overall Influence
Janice Ellen Clements is vice dean for faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Mary Wallace Stanton Professor of Faculty Affairs. She is a professor in the departments of Molecular and Comparative Pathobiology, Neurology, and Pathology, and has a joint appointment in molecular biology and genetics. Her molecular biology and virology research examines lentiviruses and how they cause neurological diseases.
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Valerie Mizrahi
#53521
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Valerie Mizrahi is a South African molecular biologist. Biography The daughter of Morris and Etty Mizrahi, she was born in Harare, Zimbabwe and was educated there. Her family is a Sephardi Jewish family from the Greek island of Rhodes.
Go to Profile#464
Laura Landweber
#56323
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Laura Faye Landweber is an American evolutionary biologist. , she is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and of biological sciences at Columbia University. Previously, she was a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. She specializes in RNA-mediated epigenetic inheritance and molecular evolution.
Go to Profile#465
Lu Chen
#45517
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Lu Chen is a Chinese-born American neuroscientist, who is a Professor of Neurosurgery, and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and is a member of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. She was previously an Associate Professor of Neurobiology and a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#466
Rachel Yehuda
#24852
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Rachel Yehuda is a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, the vice chair for veterans affairs in the psychiatry department, and the director of the traumatic stress studies division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She also leads the PTSD clinical research program at the neurochemistry and neuroendocrinology laboratory at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center. In 2020 she became director of the Center for Psychedelic Psychotherapy and Trauma Research at Mount Sinai.
Go to Profile#467
Xuemei Chen
#70823
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Xuemei Chen is a Chinese-American molecular biologist. She is the Furuta Chair Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside. She was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2013.
Go to Profile#468
Anne Magurran
#73076
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Anne Elizabeth Magurran is a British Professor of ecology at University of St Andrews in Scotland. She is the author of several books on measuring biological diversity, and the importance for quantifying biodiversity for conservation. She has won numerous awards and honors, is regularly consulted for global assessments and analyses of biodiversity and conservation and her research is often highlighted by journalists.
Go to Profile#469
Ruth Bishop
#28455
Overall Influence
1933 - 2022 (89 years)
Ruth Frances Bishop was an Australian virologist, who was a leading member of the team that discovered the human rotavirus. Biography Bishop was born in Dandenong, Victoria, and grew up in Frankston where her father was principal of Frankston High School.
Go to Profile#470
Hanna Kokko
#42197
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Hanna Kokko is a scientist and full professor at the University of Zurich. She works in the fields of evolution and ecology and is known for her research on the evolution and maintenance of sex, the feedback between ecology and evolution, and the evolutionary ecology of cancer.
Go to Profile#471
Joan W. Bennett
#56925
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Joan Wennstrom Bennett is a fungal geneticist who also is active in issues concerning women in science. Educated at Upsala College and the University of Chicago , she was on the faculty of Tulane University for 35 years. She is a past president of the American Society for Microbiology and of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology , and past Editor in Chief of Mycologia . She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.
Go to Profile#472
Terri Attwood
#43099
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Teresa K. Attwood is a professor of Bioinformatics in the Department of Computer Science and School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester and a visiting fellow at the European Bioinformatics Institute . She held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at University College London from 1993 to 1999 and at the University of Manchester from 1999 to 2002.
Go to Profile#473
Donna Baird
#41852
Overall Influence
Donna Day Baird is an American epidemiologist and evolutionary-population biologist. She is a senior investigator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. She is known for her research in reproductive health through NIEHS.
Go to Profile#474
Elodie Ghedin
#51882
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Elodie Ghedin is a Canadian parasitologist and virologist as well as a professor at the New York University Center for Genomics and Systems Biology. Her work focuses on the molecular biology and genomics of the parasites that cause diseases such as elephantiasis, and river blindness, and on the evolution of the influenza virus. She was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow, a 2012 Kavli Frontier of Science Fellow, and a 2017 American Academy of Microbiology Fellow. She also was Awarded the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award in 2010.
Go to Profile#475
Katherine Ralls
#63431
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Katherine S. Ralls is an American zoologist and conservationist who is Senior Research Zoologist Emerita at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, National Zoological Park. Ralls' research interests are in the behavioral ecology, genetics, and conservation of mammals, both terrestrial and marine. Since 1980, she has focused on conservation biology, especially the genetic problems of small captive and wild populations.
Go to Profile#476
Anne B. Young
#44888
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Anne Buckingham Young is an American physician and neuroscientist who has made major contributions to the study of neurodegenerative diseases, with a focus on movement disorders like Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease. Young completed her undergraduate studies at Vassar College and earned a dual MD/PhD from Johns Hopkins Medical School. She has held faculty positions at University of Michigan and Harvard University. She became the first female chief of service at Massachusetts General Hospital when she was appointed Chief of Neurology in 1991. She retired from this role and from clinical service in 2012.
Go to Profile#477
Anna Tramontano
#66567
Overall Influence
1957 - 2017 (60 years)
Anna Tramontano was an Italian computational biologist and chair professor of biochemistry at the Sapienza University of Rome. From 2011 to 2014 she was a member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council . She was an associate editor for the journal Bioinformatics from 2005 until 2016 editing papers in the area of structural bioinformatics.
Go to Profile#478
Cindy Lee Van Dover
#48911
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Cindy Lee Van Dover is the Harvey Smith Professor of Biological Oceanography and chair of the Division of Marine Science and Conservation at Duke University. She is also the director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory. Her primary area of research is oceanography, but she also studies biodiversity, biogeochemistry, conservation biology, ecology, and marine science.
Go to Profile#479
Andrea Gamarnik
#68029
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Andrea Gamarnik is an Argentinian molecular virologist noted for her work on Dengue fever. She received a 2016 L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science fellowship for work on mosquito-borne viruses include Dengue fever. She also was granted the Konex Award Merit Diploma in 2013 and the Platinum Konex Award in 2023 for her work in those last decades. She studied at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of California, San Francisco. She has done work for the Leloir Institute. She is the first female Argentinian to become a member of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Go to Profile#480
Tracy Palmer
#48066
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Tracy Palmer is a Professor of Microbiology in the Biosciences Institute at Newcastle University in Tyne & Wear, England. She is known for her work on the twin-arginine translocation pathway. Early life and education Palmer was born in Sheffield on 8 May 1967, the only child of Enid and Roy Palmer . Palmer was brought up in the steel town of Stocksbridge in South Yorkshire where she attended Stocksbridge High School. Palmer attended the University of Birmingham where she was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry in 1988 followed by a PhD in 1992 for research investigating the enzyme kinetics of the proton pumping transhydrogenase from photosynthetic bacteria.
Go to Profile#481
Lynne Talley
#45111
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Lynne Talley is a physical oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography known for her research into the large-scale circulation of water masses in the global ocean. Early life and education Talley received a B.A. in physics in 1976 from Oberlin College and a Bachelor of Music in piano performance from Oberlin Conservatory of Music. The following year, she studied piano performance with Carl Seeman at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany. She continued her studies at the New England Conservatory of Music. After moving to San Diego, she studied music at San Diego Stat...
Go to Profile#482
Neena Schwartz
#46279
Overall Influence
1926 - 2018 (92 years)
Neena Betty Schwartz was an American endocrinologist and William Deering Professor of Endocrinology Emerita in the Department of Neurobiology at Northwestern University. She was best known for her work on female reproductive biology and the regulation of hormonal signaling pathways, particularly for the discovery of the signaling hormone inhibin. Schwartz was an active feminist advocate for women in science throughout her career; she was a founding member of the Association for Women in Science organization in 1971 and shared the founding presidency with Judith Pool. She also co-founded the W...
Go to Profile#483
Kathrin Jansen
#50754
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Kathrin U. Jansen is the former Head of Vaccine Research and Development at Pfizer. She previously led the development of the HPV vaccine and newer versions of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine , and is working with BioNTech to create a COVID-19 vaccine using mRNA that was approved for Emergency Use Authorization in the United States on December 11, 2020.
Go to Profile#484
Mary R. Dawson
#51463
Overall Influence
1931 - 2020 (89 years)
Mary R. Dawson was a vertebrate paleontologist and curator emeritus at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Education and career Dawson was raised in Michigan, received her undergraduate degree from Michigan State University, and received her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. She was Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh from 1972 until she retired in 2003, including serving as chair of the Earth Sciences Division from 1973 to 1997.
Go to Profile#485
Elsie Quarterman
#43595
Overall Influence
1910 - 2014 (104 years)
Elsie Quarterman was a prominent plant ecologist. She was a Professor Emerita at Vanderbilt University. Quarterman was born on November 28, 1910, in Valdosta, Georgia. She earned a B.A. from Georgia State Women's College in 1932 and earned an M.A. in botany from Duke University in 1943. She completed her PhD at Duke University in 1949 with Henry J. Oosting. During her graduate work and afterward, she also collaborated extensively with Catherine Keever.
Go to Profile#486
Amita Sehgal
#61025
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Amita Sehgal is a molecular biologist and chronobiologist in the Department of Neuroscience at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Sehgal was involved in the discovery of Drosophila TIM and many other important components of the Drosophila clock mechanism. Sehgal also played a pivotal role in the development of Drosophila as a model for the study of sleep. Her research continues to be focused on understanding the genetic basis of sleep and also how circadian systems relate to other aspects of physiology.
Go to Profile#487
Shelley Berger
#73052
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Shelley L. Berger is the Daniel S. Och Professor of cell and developmental biology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Her research focuses on epigenetics. Education and career Berger graduated from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor with a BS in biology in 1982 and a PhD in cell and molecular biology in 1987. She did a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT. Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania faculty, she was the Hilary Koprowski Professor at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia.
Go to Profile#488
Margie Profet
#25665
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Margaret J. "Margie" Profet is an American evolutionary biologist with no formal biology training who created a decade-long controversy when she published her findings on the role of Darwinian evolution in menstruation, allergies and morning sickness. She argued that these three processes had evolved to eliminate pathogens, carcinogens and other toxins from the body.
Go to Profile#489
Mary Jeanne Kreek
#27039
Overall Influence
1937 - 2021 (84 years)
Mary Jeanne Kreek was an American neurobiologist specializing in the study and treatment of addiction. She is best known for her work with Marie Nyswander and Dr. Vincent Dole in the development of methadone therapy for heroin addiction.
Go to Profile#490
Wendy Barclay
#20696
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Wendy Sue Fox is a British virologist. She is currently head of Department of Infectious Disease and chair in Influenza Virology at Imperial College London. She leads a team of scientists studying the influenza virus and its physiology and morphology to discover novel vaccines. In particular, they are trying to understand more about influenza virus mutations, and how they can allow scientists to create new vaccines against possible flu pandemics.
Go to Profile#491
Anne Ridley
#71951
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Anne Jacqueline Ridley is professor of Cell Biology and Head of School for Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bristol. She was previously a professor at King's College London. Education Ridley was educated at Clare College, Cambridge and awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 1985. After being encouraged by Tim Hunt to pursue a career in research she moved to the University of London where she was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1989 for research investigating the regulation of oncogenes in Schwann cells supervise...
Go to Profile#492
R. Rajalakshmi
#48154
Overall Influence
1926 - 2007 (81 years)
R. Rajalakshmi was an Indian biochemist and nutritionist. She developed nutritious, economical diets for Indian families. Biography Lakshmi Ramaswami Iyer was born in 1926 in Quilon, Kerala to Meenakshi and G.S. Ramaswami Iyer. She added Raja to her given name at the age of five and grew up in Madras, where her father was employed as a postal audit officer.
Go to Profile#493
Juleen Zierath
#54189
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Juleen R. Zierath is an American-Swedish biologist. Her research focuses on the cellular mechanisms that correspond to the development of insulin resistance in Type II diabetes. Her other research areas look at exercise-mediated effects on skeletal muscle glucose metabolism and gene expression.
Go to Profile#494
Clare Waterman
#68118
Overall Influence
Clare M. Waterman is a cell biologist who has worked on understanding the role of the cytoskeleton in cell migration. Waterman is a Distinguished Investigator, Chief of the Laboratory of Cell and Tissue Morphodynamics, and Director of the Cell and Developmental Biology Center at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute , in the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda MD, USA. Waterman has received several awards and honors, including the Sackler International prize in Biophysics, the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, and the Arthur S. Flemming Award for Public Service. In 2018, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#495
Flossie Wong-Staal
#29913
Overall Influence
1947 - 2020 (73 years)
Flossie Wong-Staal was a Chinese-American virologist and molecular biologist. She was the first scientist to clone HIV and determine the function of its genes, which was a major step in proving that HIV is the cause of AIDS. From 1990 to 2002, she held the Florence Riford Chair in AIDS Research at the University of California, San Diego . She was co-founder and, after retiring from UCSD, she became the chief scientific officer of Immusol, which was renamed Pharmaceuticals in 2007 when it transitioned to a drug development company focused on hepatitis C and continued as chief scientific offic...
Go to Profile#496
Cisca Wijmenga
#38132
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Tjitske Nienke "Cisca" Wijmenga is a Dutch professor of Human Genetics at the University of Groningen and the University Medical Center Groningen. She has been Rector Magnificus of the University since September 2019.
Go to Profile#497
Carol Mason
#46834
Overall Influence
Carol Ann Mason is a Professor of Pathology and Cell Biology at Columbia University in the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. She studies axon guidance in visual pathways in an effort to restore vision to the blind. Her research focuses on the retinal ganglion cell. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.
Go to Profile#498
Shobhona Sharma
#68451
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Shobhona Sharma is a professor specializing in immunology, molecular biology, and biochemistry at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. She is also the chairperson of the Department of Biological Sciences. She is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy.
Go to Profile#499
Sarah Tishkoff
#58004
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Sarah Anne Tishkoff is an American geneticist and the David and Lyn Silfen Professor in the Department of Genetics and Biology at the University of Pennsylvania. She also serves as a director for the American Society of Human Genetics and is an associate editor at PLOS Genetics, G3 , and Genome Research. She is also a member of the scientific advisory board at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Go to Profile#500
Elaine Ostrander
#65505
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Elaine Ann Ostrander is an American geneticist at the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She holds a number of professional academic appointments, currently serving as Distinguished and Senior Investigator and head of the NHGRI Section of Comparative Genomics; and Chief of the Cancer Genetics and Comparative Genomics Branch. She is known for her research on prostate cancer susceptibility in humans and for conducting genetic investigations with the Canis familiaris —the domestic dog— model, which she has used to study disease susceptibility and frequency and other aspects of natural variation across mammals.
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