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 Chemistry,
#1
Stephanie Kwolek
#1755
Overall Influence
1923 - 2014 (91 years)
Stephanie Louise Kwolek was a Polish-American chemist who is known for inventing Kevlar. Her career at the DuPont company spanned more than 40 years. She discovered the first of a family of synthetic fibers of exceptional strength and stiffness: poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide.
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Dorothy Hodgkin
#580
Overall Influence
1910 - 1994 (84 years)
Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin was a Nobel Prize-winning British chemist who advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules, which became essential for structural biology.
Go to Profile#3
Ada Yonath
#810
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
#4
Reiko Kuroda
#17636
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
is a Japanese chemist who is a professor at the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Tokyo. Early life and education Kuroda was born in Akita but grew up in Miygai, on the island of Honshu, Japan. She obtained her MSc and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Tokyo. Her doctorate focused on determining the stereochemistry of metal complexes.
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Susan Solomon
#5999
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
#6
Frances Arnold
#3660
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
#7
Isabella Karle
#10834
Overall Influence
1921 - 2017 (96 years)
Isabella Karle was an American chemist who was instrumental in developing techniques to extract plutonium chloride from a mixture containing plutonium oxide. For her scientific work, Karle received the Garvan–Olin Medal, Gregori Aminoff Prize, Bower Award, National Medal of Science, and the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Award .
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Zhenan Bao
#14079
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Zhenan Bao is a chemical engineer. She serves as K. K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Chemistry and Material Science and Engineering. She served as the Department Chair of Chemical Engineering from 2018 to 2022. Bao is known for her work on organic field-effect transistors and organic semiconductors, for applications including flexible electronics and electronic skin.
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Ruth R. Benerito
#11856
Overall Influence
1916 - 2013 (97 years)
Ruth Mary Rogan Benerito was an American chemist and inventor known for her work related to the textile industry, notably including the development of wash-and-wear cotton fabrics. She held 55 patents.
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Asima Chatterjee
#8832
Overall Influence
1917 - 2006 (89 years)
Asima Chatterjee was an Indian organic chemist noted for her work in the fields of organic chemistry and phytomedicine. Her most notable work includes research on vinca alkaloids, the development of anti-epileptic drugs, and development of anti-malarial drugs. She also authored a considerable volume of work on medicinal plants of the Indian subcontinent. She was the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Science from an Indian university.
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Helen Sharman
#6947
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Helen Patricia Sharman, CMG, OBE, HonFRSC is a British chemist and cosmonaut who became the first British person, first Western European woman and first privately funded woman in space, as well as the first woman to visit the Mir space station, in May 1991.
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Michelle Francl
#17443
Overall Influence
Michelle M. Francl is an American chemist. Francl is a professor of chemistry, and has taught physical chemistry, general chemistry and mathematical modeling at Bryn Mawr College since 1986. Francl is noted for developing new methodology in computational chemistry, including the 6-31G* basis set for Na to Ar and electrostatic potential charges. She received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in 1983
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Irina Beletskaya
#28460
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Irina Petrovna Beletskaya is a Soviet and Russian professor of chemistry at Moscow State University. She specializes in organometallic chemistry and its application to problems in organic chemistry. She is best known for her studies on aromatic reaction mechanisms, as well as work on carbanion acidity and reactivity. She developed some of the first methods for carbon-carbon bond formation using palladium or nickel catalysts, and extended these reactions to work in aqueous media. She also helped to open up the chemistry of organolanthanides.
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Jackie Yi-Ru Ying
#17323
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Jackie Yi-Ru Ying is an American nanotechnology scientist based in Singapore. She is the founding executive director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology . Early life and career Ying was born in Taipei in 1966. She moved to Singapore with her family in 1973 as a child where she was a student at Rulang Primary School and Raffles Girls' School. She then went to New York City, earning a B.Eng. degree by graduating summa cum laude from Cooper Union in 1987. She then attended Princeton University, receiving her MA in 1988 and her PhD in 1991, both in chemical engineering. She spen...
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Mary L. Good
#18178
Overall Influence
1931 - 2019 (88 years)
Mary Lowe Good was an American inorganic chemist who worked academically, in industrial research and in government. Good contributed to the understanding of catalysts such as ruthenium which activate or speed up chemical reactions.
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JoAnne Stubbe
#23489
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
JoAnne Stubbe is an American chemist best known for her work on ribonucleotide reductases, for which she was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2009. In 2017, she retired as a Professor of Chemistry and Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Karen Wetterhahn
#27527
Overall Influence
1948 - 1997 (49 years)
Karen Elizabeth Wetterhahn , also known as Karen Wetterhahn Jennette, was an American professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, who specialized in toxic metal exposure. She died of mercury poisoning at the age of 48 due to accidental exposure to the extremely toxic organic mercury compound dimethylmercury . Protective gloves in use at the time of the incident provided insufficient protection, and exposure to only a few drops of the chemical absorbed through the gloves proved to be fatal after less than a year.
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Sally Price
#35017
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Sarah Lois Price is Professor of Physical Chemistry at University College London. Education Price was educated at the University of Cambridge, where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977 followed by a PhD in 1980. Her doctoral research modelled the intermolecular forces between diatomic molecules and was supervised by Anthony Stone.
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Carolyn Bertozzi
#10261
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi is an American chemist and Nobel laureate, known for her wide-ranging work spanning both chemistry and biology. She coined the term "bioorthogonal chemistry" for chemical reactions compatible with living systems. Her recent efforts include synthesis of chemical tools to study cell surface sugars called glycans and how they affect diseases such as cancer, inflammation, and viral infections like COVID-19. At Stanford University, she holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Bertozzi is also an Investigator at the Howard H...
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Tracy Caldwell Dyson
#9731
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Tracy Caldwell Dyson is an American chemist and NASA astronaut. Caldwell Dyson was a mission specialist on Space Shuttle Endeavour flight STS-118 in August 2007 and part of the Expedition 23 and Expedition 24 crew on the International Space Station from April 2010 to September 2010. She has completed three spacewalks, logging more than 22 hours of extravehicular activity. She is scheduled to return to space on March 13th, 2024 for a third time on board Soyuz MS-25 for a 6 months mission onboard the ISS.
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Jacqui Cole
#11006
Overall Influence
Jacqueline Manina Cole is the Head of the Molecular Engineering group in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Her research considers the design of functional materials for optoelectronic applications.
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Darleane C. Hoffman
#15766
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
Darleane Christian Hoffman is an American nuclear chemist who was among the researchers who confirmed the existence of Seaborgium, element 106. She is a faculty senior scientist in the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor in the graduate school at UC Berkeley. In acknowledgment of her many achievements, Discover magazine recognized her in 2002 as one of the 50 most important women in science.
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Gillian Reid
#26946
Overall Influence
Gillian Reid is a British chemist who is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and former Head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Southampton. Her research considers coordination chemistry, inorganic semiconductors and metal fluoride scaffolds. In 2020, she was appointed the President-elect of the Royal Society of Chemistry, becoming President in 2022.
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Yamuna Krishnan
#33231
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Yamuna Krishnan is a professor at the Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago, where she has worked since August 2014. She was born to P.T. Krishnan and Mini in Parappanangadi, in the Malappuram district of Kerala, India. She was earlier a Reader in National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India. Krishnan won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for science and technology, the highest science award in India in the year 2013 in the Chemical Science category.
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Elmira Süleymanova
#17792
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Elmira Süleymanova , is an Azerbaijani chemist and civil servant. In 2002 she became the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic. Biography Süleymanova was born in Baku on 17 July 1937 and graduated in Chemistry from the State University of Azerbaijan and graduated with honors. Since then she worked in the Institute of Petrochemical Processes of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences as a laboratory assistant and later became the Head of the laboratory. In 1967 she got a postgraduate from the National Academy of Sciences, in 1980 a doctorate and has been a university professor since 1988.
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Joanna Fowler
#29946
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Joanna Sigfred Fowler is a scientist emeritus at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. She served as professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and director of Brookhaven's Radiotracer Chemistry, Instrumentation and Biological Imaging Program. Fowler studied the effect of disease, drugs, and aging on the human brain and radiotracers in brain chemistry. She has received many awards for her pioneering work, including the National Medal of Science.
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Helen H. Fielding
#36062
Overall Influence
Helen H. Fielding is a Professor of physical chemistry at University College London . She focuses on ultrafast transient spectroscopy of protein chromophores and molecules. She was the first woman to win the Royal Society of Chemistry Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize and Marlow Award .
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Julie Macpherson
#37143
Overall Influence
Julie Macpherson is a professor of chemistry at the University of Warwick. In 2017 she was awarded the Royal Society Innovation award for her research into boron doped diamond electrochemical sensors.
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Laura L. Kiessling
#26387
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Laura Lee Kiessling is an American chemist and the Novartis Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kiessling's research focuses on elucidating and exploiting interactions on the cell surface, especially those mediated by proteins binding to carbohydrates. Multivalent protein-carbohydrate interactions play roles in cell-cell recognition and signal transduction. Understanding and manipulating these interactions provides tools to study biological processes and design therapeutic treatments. Kiessling's interdisciplinary research combines organic synthesis, polymer c...
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Maria Forsyth
#29565
Overall Influence
Maria Forsyth is an Australian chemist. She is a research professor at the University of the Basque Country and an Alfred Deakin Fellow at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia where she holds the Chair in Electromaterials and Corrosion Sciences.
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Sigrid D. Peyerimhoff
#28021
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Sigrid Doris Peyerimhoff is a theoretical chemist and Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, University of Bonn, Germany. Education After completing her abitur, Peyerimhoff studied physics at the University of Gießen, completing her degree in 1961 and receiving her doctorate under supervision of Bernhard Kockel in 1963. After researching at the University of Chicago, the University of Washington, and Princeton University, she returned to Germany and gained her habilitation at the University of Gießen in 1967. She became professor for theoretical chemistry a...
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Allene Jeanes
#25747
Overall Influence
1906 - 1995 (89 years)
Allene Rosalind Jeanes was an American chemical researcher, whose studies focused mainly on carbohydrates and the development of Dextran, a substance that replaced blood plasma in the Korean War. A member of the American Chemical Society, Jeanes published over 60 works, compiled 24 presentations, and received ten patents.
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Marta Catellani
#15827
Overall Influence
Marta Catellani is an Italian chemist known for her discovery of the eponymous Catellani reaction in 1997. She was elected to the European Academy of Sciences in 2016. Catellani earned her Ph.D. in chemistry in 1971 from the University of Parma, where, as of 2019, she is a professor and chairs the Department of Organic Chemistry.
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Kathryn Beers
#19149
Overall Influence
Kathryn L. Beers is an American polymer chemist. Beers is Leader of the Polymers and Complex Fluids group in the Materials Science and Engineering Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her research interests include microreactors and microfluidics, advances in polymer synthesis and reaction monitoring, macromolecular separations, integrated and high throughput measurements of polymeric materials, degradable and renewable polymeric materials, and sustainable materials.
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M. Christina White
#37934
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
M. Christina White is a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research in the field of organometallic catalysis focuses on developing highly selective carbon–hydrogen bond activation methods to streamline the process of complex molecule synthesis.
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Esther M. Conwell
#14808
Overall Influence
1922 - 2014 (92 years)
Esther Marley Conwell was a pioneering American chemist and physicist, best known for the Conwell-Weisskopf theory that describes how electrons travel through semiconductors, a breakthrough that helped revolutionize modern computing. During her life, she was described as one of the most important women in science.
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Helen Murray Free
#16865
Overall Influence
1923 - 2021 (98 years)
Helen Murray Free was an American chemist and educator. She is most known for revolutionizing many in vitro self-testing systems for diabetes and other diseases while working at Miles Laboratories. The tests are still marketed today with blood tests as Ascensia Diabetes Care, and urine tests under Siemens Healthineers. The pioneering dip-and-read strips, allowed for testing to be more convenient and efficient, enabling doctors and patients to be less reliable to laboratories for results.
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Marcia Huber
#20207
Overall Influence
Marcia Lynn Huber is an American chemical engineer. She is a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Huber's research interests include developing models for the thermophysical properties of fluids. She was awarded the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal in 2005.
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Ewine van Dishoeck
#19329
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Ewine Fleur van Dishoeck is a Dutch astronomer and chemist. She is Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at Leiden Observatory, and served as the President of the International Astronomical Union and a co-editor of the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics . She is one of the pioneers of astrochemistry, and her research is aimed at determination of the structure of cosmic objects using their molecular spectra.
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Edith M. Flanigen
#19766
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (95 years)
Edith Marie Flanigen is a noted American chemist, known for her work on synthesis of emeralds, and later zeolites for molecular sieves at Union Carbide. Early life and education Edith Marie Flanigen was born January 28, 1929, in Buffalo, New York. She and her two sisters, Joan and Jane, were introduced to chemistry by their high school teacher. The three sisters all went on to study chemistry at D'Youville College. Edith Flanigen graduated class president and valedictorian. Joan and Edith both went on to receive master's degrees in chemistry in inorganic physical chemistry at Syracuse University in 1952.
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Marye Anne Fox
#15448
Overall Influence
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Marye Anne Payne Fox was an American physical organic chemist and university administrator. She was the first female chief executive of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. In April 2004, Fox was named chancellor of the University of California, San Diego. In 2010 Fox received the National Medal of Science.
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Philiswa Nomngongo
#26870
Overall Influence
Philiswa Nomngongo is a South African professor of Analytical Chemistry and the South African Research Chair in nanotechnology for water. Her research focuses on environmental analytical chemistry and the use of nanomaterials for water treatment, water remediation, and water quality analysis and monitoring.
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Tebello Nyokong
#37976
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Tebello Nyokong is a South African chemist and distinguished professor at Rhodes University, and a recipient of South Africa's Order of Mapungubwe. Nyokong's work has been published around 450 times including a patent. She was awarded the South African Chemical Institute Gold Medal in 2012, and named one of the Top 10 Most Influential Women in Science and Technology in Africa by IT News Africa. She is currently researching photo-dynamic therapy, an alternative cancer treatment method to chemotherapy. In 2007, she was one of the top three publishing scientists in South Africa, and in 2013 she...
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Emily A. Carter
#33935
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Emily Ann Carter is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University. She has been on the faculty at Princeton since 2004, including as serving as Princeton's Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science from 2016 to 2019. She moved to UCLA to serve as executive vice chancellor and provost and a distinguished professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, before returning to Princeton in December 2021.
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Paula T. Hammond
#31319
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Paula Therese Hammond is a David H. Koch Professor in Engineering and the Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . She was the first woman and person of color appointed as head of the Chemical Engineering department. Her laboratory designs polymers and nanoparticles for drug delivery and energy-related applications including batteries and fuel cells.
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Alexandra Navrotsky
#31343
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Alexandra Navrotsky is a physical chemist in the field of nanogeoscience. She is an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society . She was a board member of the Earth Sciences and Resources division of the NAS from 1995 until 2000. In 2005, she was awarded the Urey Medal, by the European Association of Geochemistry. In 2006, she was awarded the Harry H. Hess Medal, by the American Geophysical Union. She is currently the director of NEAT ORU , a primary program in nanogeoscience. She is distinguished professor at University of Calif...
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Naomi Halas
#23303
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Naomi J. Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry and physics at Rice University. She is also the founding director of Rice University Laboratory for Nanophotonics, and the Smalley-Curl Institute. She invented the first nanoparticle with tunable plasmonic resonances, which are controlled by their shape and structure, and has won numerous awards for her pioneering work in the field of nanophotonics and plasmonics. She was also part of a team that developed the first dark pulse soliton in 1987 while working...
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Lynn Gladden
#24621
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
#49
Sandra Eaton
#31353
Overall Influence
Sandra Eaton is an American chemist and professor at the University of Denver, known for her work on electron paramagnetic resonance. Education Eaton completed her bachelor's degree in chemistry at Wellesley College in 1968. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Wellesley and published her undergraduate research. She earned a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972.
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Kyoko Nozaki
#50280
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Kyoko Nozaki is a Japanese chemist and Professor of Chemistry at University of Tokyo in Japan. Education B.S. 1986 Department of Industrial Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering Kyoto University Ph. D. 1991 from Kyoto University Thesis title "Studies on Triethylborane Induced Radical Reactions with Hydrides of Group14 Elements"During the PhD study, 1988-1989 exchange student at UC Berkeley "Studies on the Stereo-control in the Synthesis of Acyclic Compounds"
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