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,
#51
Anna J. Harrison
#32751
Overall Influence
1912 - 1998 (86 years)
Anna Jane Harrison was an American organic chemist and a professor of chemistry at Mount Holyoke College for nearly forty years. She was the first female president of the American Chemical Society, and the recipient of twenty honorary degrees. She was nationally known for her teaching and was active nationally and internationally as a supporter of women in science.
Go to Profile#52
Donna Nelson
#16295
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Donna J. Nelson is an American chemist and professor of chemistry at the University of Oklahoma. Nelson specializes in organic chemistry, which she both researches and teaches. Nelson served as a science advisor to the AMC television show Breaking Bad. She was the 2016 President of the American Chemical Society with her presidential activities focusing on and guided by communities in chemistry. Nelson's research focused on five primary topics, generally categorized in two areas, Scientific Research and America's Scientific Readiness. Within Scientific Research, Nelson's topics have been on ...
Go to Profile#53
Catherine J. Murphy
#41258
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Catherine "Cathy" J. Murphy is an American chemist and materials scientist, and is the Larry Faulkner Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . The first woman to serve as the head of the department of chemistry at UIUC, Murphy is known for her work on nanomaterials, specifically the seed-mediated synthesis of gold nanorods of controlled aspect ratio. She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.
Go to Profile#54
Claudia Felser
#42102
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Claudia Felser is a German solid state chemist and materials scientist. She is currently a director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids. Felser was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering in 2020 for the prediction and discovery of engineered quantum materials ranging from Heusler compounds to topological insulators.
Go to Profile#55
Véronique Gouverneur
#32909
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Véronique Gouverneur is the Waynflete Professor of Chemistry at Magdalen College at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Prior to the Waynflete professorship, she held a tutorial fellowship at Merton College, Oxford. Her research on fluorine chemistry has received many professional and scholarly awards.
Go to Profile#56
Christine S. Chow
#31424
Overall Influence
Christine "Christy" Chow is a professor of chemistry and former associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University. She works on modified RNAs, RNA-ligand interactions and RNA therapeutics. She is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society .
Go to Profile#57
Katsuko Saruhashi
#25242
Overall Influence
1920 - 2007 (87 years)
Katsuko Saruhashi was a Japanese geochemist who created tools that let her take some of the first measurements of carbon dioxide levels in seawater. She later showed evidence of the dangers of radioactive fallout and how far it can travel. Along with this focus on safety, she also researched peaceful uses of nuclear power.
Go to Profile#58
Suzanne Fortier
#10062
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Suzanne Fortier is a Canadian crystallographer and the 17th Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University. Early life and education Fortier was born in Saint-Timothée, Quebec, a town on Île-de-Salaberry in the St. Lawrence River. Her parents ran a small local hotel. She grew up speaking only French and attended a small local convent, which served as elementary school. A nun who taught chemistry and was enthusiastic about the subject inspired her to pursue science.
Go to Profile#59
Kristy Turner
#32597
Overall Influence
Kristy Turner is a British chemist, lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester and a chemistry teacher at Bolton School, Manchester. Her research is based on the field of chemical education, science communication, development of the chemistry curriculum and assessment, and also in engagement of STEM subjects within school students. She is the current chair of the Education in Chemistry magazine editorial board at the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Go to Profile#60
Louise Natrajan
#32763
Overall Influence
Louise Sarah Natrajan is a British chemist and a reader in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Manchester. Her research typically is based on actinide chemistry and luminescence spectroscopy, though some of her published research has extended to lanthanide chemistry, transition metal complexes and organic chemistry.
Go to Profile#61
Simone Badal-McCreath
#25200
Overall Influence
Simone Anne Marie Badal-McCreath is a Jamaican chemist and cancer researcher. In 2014 she was one of five women awarded the Elsevier Foundation Award for Early Career Scientists in the Developing World for her creation of a lab at the Natural Products Institute to research the anti-cancer properties of natural Jamaican products. She currently lectures in Basic Medical Sciences
Go to Profile#62
Carol V. Robinson
#32139
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
#63
Stefanie Dehnen
#30439
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Stefanie Dehnen is a German chemist. She is the executive director of the Institute of Nanotechnology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. From 2006 to 2022, she was a full professor for inorganic chemistry at the University of Marburg. She has received numerous awards for her research in inorganic chemistry. In 2024 and 2025, she will be the president of the German Chemical Society.
Go to Profile#64
Xue-Min Cheng
#50149
Overall Influence
Xue-Min Cheng is a medicinal chemist, author and pharmaceutical executive best known as the co-author of The Logic of Chemical Synthesis, which formalized retrosynthesis. The concept for this Elias J. Corey won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Go to Profile#65
Alice Y. Ting
#25996
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Alice Yen-Ping Ting is Taiwanese-born American chemist. She is a professor of genetics, of biology, and by courtesy, of chemistry at Stanford University. She is also a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#66
Anna Krylov
#43357
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Anna I. Krylov is the USC Associates Chair in Natural Sciences and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern California , working in the field of theoretical and computational quantum chemistry. She is the inventor of the spin-flip method. Krylov is the president of Q-Chem, Inc. and an elected member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, the Academia Europaea, and the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Go to Profile#67
Donna Blackmond
#44507
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Donna Blackmond is an American chemical engineer and the John C. Martin Endowed Chair in Chemistry at Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA. Her research focuses on prebiotic chemistry, the origin of biological homochirality, and kinetics and mechanisms of asymmetric catalytic reactions. Notable works include the development of Reaction Progress Kinetic Analysis , analysis of non-linear effects of catalyst enantiopurity, biological homochirality and amino acid behavior.
Go to Profile#68
Karen L. Wooley
#45778
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Karen L. Wooley is an American polymer chemist. She is a Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University whose research focuses on developing novel polymers and nanostructured materials. Early life and education Wooley was born and raised in Oakridge, Oregon, a small logging community in the mountains of Oregon. She received her B.Sc. in Chemistry from Oregon State University in 1988, and a Ph.D. in Polymer/Organic Chemistry from Cornell University in 1993 under the guidance of Jean Fréchet.
Go to Profile#69
Joanna Aizenberg
#27983
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Joanna Aizenberg is a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. She is the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the co-director of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology and a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. She is a prominent figure in the field of biologically inspired materials science, having authored 90 publications and holding 25 patents.
Go to Profile#70
Remziye Hisar
#12688
Overall Influence
1902 - 1992 (90 years)
Remziye Hisar was a Turkish academic and chemist. As the first Turkish woman with a degree from Sorbonne University, she occupied academic positions at various Turkish universities during her career and published numerous articles, mostly on metaphosphates and Turkish herbs. She is considered to be one of the first modern women scientists of Turkey.
Go to Profile#71
Eva Åkesson
#49071
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Eva Barbro Helen Åkesson is a Swedish professor of chemical physics who was the Rector of Uppsala University 2012–2020. She was previously Pro-Rector of Lund University. Career After taking the social sciences programme at Ängelholm Upper Secondary School, Åkesson studied chemistry at Umeå University, completing her doctorate in physical chemistry in 1989. She subsequently joined the faculty of Lund University as a researcher and teacher, later serving as director of studies in chemistry. In 2003, Rector Göran Bexell appointed her to one of the two newly established positions as Vice-Rector a...
Go to Profile#72
Giuliana Tesoro
#31843
Overall Influence
1921 - 2002 (81 years)
Giuliana Tesoro was an Italian-born American chemist who earned more than 125 patents, with her most notable consisting of improvements in fabric comfort, practicality, and flame resistance. Biography Guiliana Cavaglieri was born to Gino and Margherita Maroni Cavaglieri, in Venice, Italy during the center of Facism’s rise in the region. Her parents were wealthy Jewish people with college degrees, and the prestige certainly carried over to Tesoro who began third grade at the early age of six. Tesoro graduated from Liceo Classico Marco Polo high school in 1938 shortly after her father passed away in 1934.
Go to Profile#73
Helen M. Berman
#19481
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Helen Miriam Berman is a Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University and a former director of the RCSB Protein Data Bank . A structural biologist, her work includes structural analysis of protein-nucleic acid complexes, and the role of water in molecular interactions. She is also the founder and director of the Nucleic Acid Database, and led the Protein Structure Initiative Structural Genomics Knowledgebase.
Go to Profile#74
Lesley Yellowlees
#45970
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
#75
Mary Peters Fieser
#43326
Overall Influence
1909 - 1997 (88 years)
Mary Peters Fieser was an American chemist best known for the many books she wrote with her husband Louis Fieser. Biography She was born Mary Peters in 1909 in Atchison, Kansas. Her father, Robert Peters, was a college professor of English: the family later moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when he accepted a position at the Carnegie Institute of Technology . Mary and her sister Ruth were educated in a private girls’ high school, and both went on to study at Bryn Mawr College. Mary graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1930 with a B.A. in chemistry.
Go to Profile#76
Madeleine M. Joullié
#41179
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (97 years)
Madeleine M. Joullié is an American-Brazilian organic chemist. She was the first woman to join the University of Pennsylvania chemistry faculty as well as the first female organic chemist to be appointed to a tenure track position in a major American university. She was one of the first affirmative action officers at the University of Pennsylvania. She has a distinguished record as a teacher of both undergraduate and graduate-level organic chemistry, and as a mentor of students.
Go to Profile#77
Clare Grey
#45740
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Dame Clare Philomena Grey is Geoffrey Moorhouse Gibson Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Grey uses nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study and optimize batteries.
Go to Profile#78
Cynthia Friend
#30057
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Cynthia Friend is president and chief operating officer of The Kavli Foundation. She is on leave from the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. Friend was the first female full professor of chemistry at Harvard, attaining the position in 1989. Friend has held the Theodore William Richards Chiar in Chemistry and served as professor of materials science in the Paulson School of Engineering. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and the American Chemical Society.
Go to Profile#79
Ann C. Noble
#28768
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Ann C. Noble is a sensory chemist and retired professor from the University of California, Davis. During her time at the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, Noble invented the "Aroma Wheel" which is credited with enhancing the public understanding of wine tasting and terminology. At the time of her hiring at UC Davis in 1974, Noble was the first woman hired as a faculty member of the Viticulture department. Noble retired from Davis in 2002 and in 2003 was named Emeritus Professor of Enology. Since retirement she has participated as a judge in the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Compet...
Go to Profile#80
Janine Cossy
#48591
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Janine Cossy is a French chemist who specialises in the synthesis of biologically-active products and is an emeritus professor of organic chemistry at ESPCI Paris. Biography Janine Cossy earned a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Reims, and then undertook a post-doctoral fellowship with the team of Professor Barry Trost at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Appointed as a professor at ESPCI ParisTech in 1990, her work focuses on the total synthesis of natural biologically-active products like anticancer agents, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories or products acting on the central nervous system.
Go to Profile#81
Bettye Washington Greene
#45989
Overall Influence
1935 - 1995 (60 years)
#82
Catherine Coleman
#8360
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Catherine Grace "Cady" Coleman is an American chemist, engineer, former United States Air Force colonel, and retired NASA astronaut. She is a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions, and departed the International Space Station on May 23, 2011, as a crew member of Expedition 27 after logging 159 days in space.
Go to Profile#83
Laura Robinson
#48366
Overall Influence
Laura Frances Robinson, born November 1976, is a British scientist who is Professor of Geochemistry at the University of Bristol. She makes use of geochemistry to study the processes that govern the climate. In particular, Robinson studies radioactive elements, as these can be analysed in geological materials. She was awarded the 2010 President's Award of the Geological Society of London.
Go to Profile#84
Geraldine L. Richmond
#19659
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Geraldine Lee Richmond is an American chemist and physical chemist who is serving as the Under Secretary of Energy for Science in the US Department of Energy. Richmond was confirmed to her DOE role by the United States Senate on November 5, 2021. Richmond is the Presidential Chair in Science and professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon . She conducts fundamental research to understand the chemistry and physics of complex surfaces and interfaces. These understandings are most relevant to energy production, atmospheric chemistry and remediation of the environment. Throughout her career she has worked to increase the number and success of women scientists in the U.S.
Go to Profile#85
Inga Fischer-Hjalmars
#45817
Overall Influence
1918 - 2008 (90 years)
Inga Fischer-Hjalmars was an internationally acclaimed Swedish physicist, chemist, pharmacist, humanist, and a pioneer in quantum chemistry. She was one of the pioneers in the application of quantum mechanics to solve problems in theoretical chemistry. Fischer-Hjalmars also served as chair of the International Council of Scientific Unions' Standing Committee on the Free Circulation of Scientists.
Go to Profile#86
Eva Philbin
#37425
Overall Influence
1914 - 2005 (91 years)
Eva Philbin was an Irish chemist who became the first woman president of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland. Early life and education Born Eva Maria Ryder in Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland, Philbin the elder of two daughters of Kate and George Ryder. She attended the Convent of Mercy in Ballina, and received her B.Sc in 1936 with first class honors and M.Sc from University College Galway. While at University College Galway she worked under Tom Dillon where they worked on identifying carbohydrates in seaweed.
Go to Profile#87
Julia Higgins
#16384
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Dame Julia Stretton Higgins is a British polymer scientist. Since 1976 she has been based at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, where she is professor and senior research investigator.
Go to Profile#88
Martina Stenzel
#49792
Overall Influence
Martina Heide Stenzel is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of New South Wales . She is also a Royal Australian Chemical Institute University Ambassador. She became editor for the Australian Journal of Chemistry in 2008 and has served as Scientific Editor and as of 2021, as Editorial Board Chair of RSC Materials Horizons.
Go to Profile#89
Vivian Yam
#48246
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Professor Vivian Yam Wing-wah CSci, CChem, FRSC, is a Hong Kong chemist. Yam is the youngest female member ever to be elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She was a 2011 L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science laureate "for her work on light-emitting materials and innovative ways of capturing solar energy."
Go to Profile#90
Jean'ne Shreeve
#61254
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
Jean'ne Marie Shreeve is an American chemist known for her studies of fluorine compounds and explosives. She has held her namesake professorship at the University of Idaho since 2004. Early life and education Born in Deer Lodge, Montana in 1933, Jean'ne Shreeve was the second of two children to Mary-Frances and Charles W. Shreeve. She was named after the popular 1928 song "Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time". Though Jean'ne's father worked for the Northern Pacific Railway, her mother, a teacher, was unemployed for much of her childhood due to the Great Depressionand the prevailing notion that families only needed one breadwinner.
Go to Profile#91
Sharon Hammes-Schiffer
#60853
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Sharon Hammes-Schiffer is a physical chemist who has contributed to theoretical and computational chemistry. She is currently a Sterling Professor of Chemistry at Yale University. She has served as senior editor and deputy editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry and advisory editor for Theoretical Chemistry Accounts. she is editor-in-chief of Chemical Reviews.
Go to Profile#92
Kristi Anseth
#33711
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Kristi S. Anseth is the Tisone Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, an Associate Professor of Surgery, and a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her main research interests are the design of synthetic biomaterials using hydrogels, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine.
Go to Profile#93
Martha Greenblatt
#52170
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Martha Greenblatt is a chemist, researcher, and faculty member at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. As of January 2008 she was the only female chair of a science department in the School of Arts and Science. Greenblatt took the position of chair of the chemistry department at Rutgers while pursuing research interests in solid state inorganic chemistry. She was also the recipient of the 2003 American Chemical Society’s Garvan-Olin Medal – a national award given yearly to an outstanding woman chemist. In 2004, she became Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry at Rutgers.
Go to Profile#94
Joyce Jacobson Kaufman
#54249
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
Joyce Jacobson Kaufman was an American chemist known for advancing the science of quantum chemistry and for clinical research on anaesthetics. Born to an immigrant family in the Bronx and educated at Johns Hopkins University, she worked at the Sorbonne and Martin Marietta before returning to Johns Hopkins.
Go to Profile#95
Myrtle Bachelder
#41772
Overall Influence
1908 - 1997 (89 years)
Myrtle Claire Bachelder was an American chemist and Women's Army Corps officer, who is noted for her secret work on the Manhattan Project atomic bomb program, and for the development of techniques in the chemistry of metals.
Go to Profile#96
Omowunmi Sadik
#23992
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Omowunmi "Wunmi" A. Sadik is a Nigerian professor, chemist, and inventor working at New Jersey Institute of Technology. She has developed microelectrode biosensors for detection of drugs and explosives and is working on the development of technologies for recycling metal ions from waste, for use in environmental and industrial applications. In 2012, Sadik co-founded the non-profit Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization.
Go to Profile#97
Abigail Doyle
#33717
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Abigail Gutmann Doyle is a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she holds the Saul Winstein Chair in Organic Chemistry. Her research focuses on the development of new chemical transformations in organic chemistry.
Go to Profile#98
Carolina Henriette MacGillavry
#49978
Overall Influence
1904 - 1993 (89 years)
Carolina Henriette MacGillavry was a Dutch chemist and crystallographer. She is known for her discoveries on the use of diffraction in crystallography. Biography MacGillavry was born the second of six children in an intellectual family .
Go to Profile#99
Julia R. Burdge
#60238
Overall Influence
Julia R. Burdge is an American chemistry professor and author. She became notable for using a pragmatic approach to teaching chemistry in her books, giving emphasis to the applications of chemistry rather than the theory. Burdge has won several awards and recognitions throughout the years in her career as a chemistry professor.
Go to Profile#100
Eugenia Kumacheva
#56162
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Eugenia Kumacheva is a University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Toronto. Her research interests span across the fields of fundamental and applied polymers science, nanotechnology, microfluidics, and interface chemistry. She was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2008 "for the design and development of new materials with many applications including targeted drug delivery for cancer treatments and materials for high density optical data storage". In 2011, she published a book on the Microfluidic Reactors for Polymer Particles co-authored with .
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