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,
#901
Suhad Bahajri
#115969
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Suhad Bahajri is a Saudi chemist. She is a medical scientist and educator presently working as a professor of clinical biochemistry and clinical nutrition at the faculty of medicine at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah. Her research centers on diet, lifestyle and chronic diseases.
Go to Profile#902
Andrea Volkamer
#189246
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Andrea Volkamer is a German bioinformatician and professor of “Data-Driven Drug Design” at Saarland University and an associated researcher at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland . Her research focuses on data-driven drug design, with an emphasis on method development and application.
Go to Profile#903
Sarah Trimpin
#189895
Overall Influence
Sarah Trimpin is a German/American chemist and Professor at the Wayne State University. Her research interests revolve around ionizing methods in mass spectrometry. Her work has resulted in the formation of a company which aims to bring advanced ionization methods to industry. Her work has been recognized by the American Society for Mass Spectrometry with the Research Award in 2010, and the Biemann Medal in 2019.
Go to Profile#904
Maria Helena Braga
#54979
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Maria Helena Sousa Soares de Oliveira Braga is an associate professor at the Engineering Physics Department of University of Porto, Portugal. She is currently focused on research areas in Materials Science and Materials Engineering at University of Porto and University of Texas at Austin. She is credited with expanding the understanding of glass electrolyte and glass batteries with colleague John B. Goodenough. Braga is a senior research fellow in the Materials Institute headed by Goodenough.
Go to Profile#905
Dorrit Jacob
#175397
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Dorrit E. Jacob is a German-born Australian geochemist. She is the first woman to serve as Director of the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University where she is a full professor.
Go to Profile#906
Tana Wood
#98793
Overall Influence
Tana Elaine Wood is a biogeochemist and ecosystem scientist with a focus in land-use and climate change. Her research is focused on looking into how these issues affect tropical forested ecosystems and particularly focuses on soil science and below ground research efforts.
Go to Profile#907
Pratiwi Sudarmono
#17500
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Pratiwi Pujilestari Sudarmono is an Indonesian scientist. She is currently a professor of microbiology at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta. Early life and education Pratiwi Sudarmono received a master's degree from the University of Indonesia in 1977, and the Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Osaka, Japan, in 1984.
Go to Profile#908
Michelle C. Chang
#187161
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Michelle C. Y. Chang is a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a recipient of several young scientist awards for her research in biosynthesis of biofuels and pharmaceuticals.
Go to Profile#909
Melissa Hanna-Brown
#186854
Overall Influence
Melissa Hanna-Brown is a British pharmacologist. She works for Pfizer UK and is a visiting professor at the University of Warwick. Early life and education Hannah-Brown became interested in pharmacy as a child, when she worked at her local chemists on the weekend. She studied Pharmaceutical Science at the University of Sunderland, spending a year at GlaxoSmithKline and graduating in 1995. She completed a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council SmithKline Beecham sponsored PhD in pharmaceutical analysis at King's College London in 1998.
Go to Profile#910
Eva Regnier
#155004
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Eva Dorothy Regnier is a decision scientist whose research concerns the interaction between human decision-making and environmental prediction. She is a professor of decision science in the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy of the Naval Postgraduate School.
Go to Profile#911
Martina Havenith-Newen
#174864
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Martina Havenith-Newen is a German chemist. Education and career She studied physics and mathematics at the University of Bonn from 1981 to 1987. She finished her doctorate in physics in 1990 and completed her habilitation in 1997.
Go to Profile#912
Christine Grant
#189214
Overall Influence
Christine Sharon Grant is an American chemical engineer who is the Associate Dean of Faculty Advancement at North Carolina State University. Her research considers surface and environmental science. She is the 2022 President of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Go to Profile#913
Joyce Watson
#184311
Overall Influence
1918 - 2004 (86 years)
Joyce Watson FNZIC was a New Zealand chemist specialising in fruit disorders and trace elements. Academic career Watson was born in Nelson in 1918, the daughter of Helen "Nellie" Knaggs Watson and Francis George Watson . She received her education at Christchurch Girls' High School. After a BSc in 1939, Watson completed an MSc titled A phase rule investigation of the three component system BaO–2O–H2O at 25°C and 35°C in 1940 at Canterbury College, then part of the University of New Zealand. She then moved to the Cawthron Institute in 1941, where she was employed as an assistant pasture chem...
Go to Profile#914
Roxanne Johnson
#128853
Overall Influence
Roxanne L. Johnson is an American chemist specialized in developing and applying quantitative methods to determine nutrients, organic and inorganic carbon and total suspended solids in estuarine seawater systems. She works for the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Go to Profile#915
Ainissa Ramirez
#80286
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ainissa Ramirez is an American materials scientist and science communicator. Early life and education Ramirez credits watching the PBS television show 3-2-1 Contact growing up for inspiring her to pursue science, where she saw a young black girl solving problems and enjoying science. Ramirez attended an all-girls Catholic high school in Jersey City, New Jersey. To prepare to pursue a science degree in college, she took classes in calculus and electrical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology on Saturdays.
Go to Profile#916
Pervin Shroff
#69313
Overall Influence
Pervin Keki Shroff is an Indian accounting academic and Carl L. Nelson Professor of Accounting at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, known for her work in the field of information content and accountancy.
Go to Profile#917
Mayra Álvarez
#91839
Overall Influence
Mayra Angélica Álvarez Lemus is a Mexican nanoscientist. She is a professor and researcher at the Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco. Education and career Álvarez was an undergraduate at UAM Azcapotzalco, where she earned a degree in chemical engineering. She earned a doctorate in chemistry in 2008 at UAM Iztapalapa.
Go to Profile#918
Rashna Bhandari
#104066
Overall Influence
Rashna Bhandari is Head, Laboratory of Cell Signalling at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad. Bhandari is pursuing her study on signal transduction in biological systems, with particular emphasis on understanding the role of inositol pyrophosphates in physiology and metabolism.
Go to Profile#919
Tracey Brown
#106381
Overall Influence
Tracey Brown is the director of Sense about Science. She leads the work on transparency of evidence used by governments in policy to ensure the public has the same access to evidence and reasoning as the decision makers. Brown has launched multiple initiatives with Sense about Science to expand and protect honest discussions of evidence, including AllTrials, a global campaign for the reporting of all clinical trial outcomes; and the Ask for Evidence campaign, which engages the public in requesting evidence for claims.
Go to Profile#920
Jessamy Tiffen
#104182
Overall Influence
Dr. Jessamy Tiffen is an Australian Scientist and senior researcher in the Melanoma Immunology and Oncology Program at the Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine and Cell Biology at the University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Her work primarily focuses on fundamental cell biology, examining the transformation of normal cells into cancerous ones and their responses to different treatments.
Go to Profile#921
Clara Sousa-Silva
#78132
Overall Influence
Clara Sousa-Silva is a research scientist at Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. Sousa-Silva is an expert on phosphine. She has contributed to investigations of the possibility of life on Venus, working with Jane Greaves and others. Sousa-Silva also directs the Harvard-MIT Student Research Mentoring Program, which pairs high school students with astronomers to conduct research.
Go to Profile#922
Caroline Davis
#120585
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Caroline Davis is a British academic who specialises in the history of publishing culture, and government propaganda in Africa during the Cold War. She is currently an Associate Professor in Publishing at University College London.
Go to Profile#923
Geraldine Moses
#168574
Overall Influence
Geraldine Michelle Moses, is an Australian doctor of clinical pharmacy, a consultant pharmacist, and an Adjunct Associate Professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Queensland. She is a Senior Clinical Pharmacist at Mater Pharmacy Services in Brisbane.
Go to Profile#924
Leona D. Samson
#97382
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Leona D. Samson is the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor and American Cancer Society Research Professor of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she served as the Director of the Center for Environmental Health Sciences from 2001 to 2012. Before her professorship at MIT, she held a professorship at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is on the editorial board of the journal DNA Repair. Her research interests focus on "methods for measuring DNA repair capacity in human cells", research the National Institute of Health recognized as pioneering in her f...
Go to Profile#925
Bridget Mutuma
#73455
Overall Influence
Bridget K. Mutuma is a researcher in chemistry and material sciences at Nairobi University in Kenya. She focuses on developing nanomaterials associated with sensors. She is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#926
Ana Maria Porras
#178920
Overall Influence
Ana Maria Porras is an American biomedical engineer who is assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida and an IF/THEN Ambassador for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Porras has published academic research in the fields of human microbiome, tissue engineering, biomaterials, global health, and infectious disease. She is known for creating crochet versions of micro-organisms as a way of connecting with a wider audience, especially children in her home country of Colombia. A 3-D printed statue of Porras holding several of her crochet creations was included in the IF/THEN exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Go to Profile#927
Reatha Clark King
#190418
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Reatha Belle Clark King is an American chemist, the former vice president of the General Mills Corporation; and the former president, executive director, and chairman of the board of trustees of the General Mills Foundation, the philanthropic foundation of General Mills, Inc.
Go to Profile#928
Anne Wright
#176360
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Anne Margaret Wright is a British academic and academic administrator. She was educated at King's College London . She was a Lecturer in English at Lancaster University from 1969 to 1971 then Senior Lecturer in Modern English at Hatfield Polytchnic from 1971 to 84. She served as Vice Chancellor of the University of Sunderland from 1992 to 1998. She was Chair of the National Lottery Commission 2005 to 2013. She was made a CBE in 1997.
Go to Profile#929
Charlotte Anderson
#81378
Overall Influence
1915 - 2002 (87 years)
Charlotte Morrison Anderson AM FRACP FRCP FACP FRCPCH was an internationally renowned Australian scientist, physician and academic. She pioneered the field of paediatric gastroenterology working on health issues including cystic fibrosis and coeliac disease. She was the first woman professor of paediatrics in the United Kingdom.
Go to Profile#930
Jennie Hwang
#60283
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jennie Hwang is an international businesswoman, entrepreneur, engineer, scientist, author, and speaker. She is the national president of the Surface Mount Technology Association, head of H-Technologies Group and the first woman to receive a PhD from Case Western Reserve University in Materials Science and Engineering.
Go to Profile#931
Shahanaz Sultana
#141269
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Shahanaz Sultana Is a Bangladeshi agricultural officer and Scientist. She is the Chief Scientific Officer of the Department of Biotechnology, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute. She was awarded the Ekushey Padak in 2022 by the Government of Bangladesh for his significant contribution in research on the production of high yielding varieties of paddy.
Go to Profile#932
Joke Bouwstra
#192019
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Johanna Aaltje "Joke" Bouwstra is a Dutch researcher and professor of drug administration at Leiden University. Bouwstra has worked at the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, where she has been section leader of Drug Delivery Technology.
Go to Profile#933
Chavonda Jacobs-Young
#157812
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Chavonda J. Jacobs-Young is an American government executive who serves as the Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics. Jacobs-Young was previously the administrator of the Agriculture Research Service, first appointed in February 2014; she was the first female and person of color to lead the agency. In 1998, Jacobs-Young became the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in paper science.
Go to Profile#934
Emily M. Dieter
#192234
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
#935
Yan Zheng
#190198
Overall Influence
Yan Zheng is a marine geochemist known for her research on metals in groundwater and private wells in Bangladesh, China, and the United States. She is an elected fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union.
Go to Profile#936
Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim
#177578
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim is a German chemist, science communicator, television presenter and YouTuber. In June 2020 she was elected to the senate of the Max Planck Society. Life and education Nguyen-Kim was born in 1987 in Heppenheim, Hesse; her parents are from South Vietnam, her father is also a chemist. She completed the in 2006 in Hemsbach. She studied at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She worked on her doctorate at RWTH Aachen University, Harvard University, and the University of Potsdam; completing it in 2017. She rejected a job offer from BASF to focus on science communication.
Go to Profile#937
Maud Menten
1879 - 1960 (81 years)
Maud Leonora Menten was a Canadian physician and chemist. As a bio-medical and medical researcher, she made significant contributions to enzyme kinetics and histochemistry, and invented a procedure that remains in use. She is primarily known for her work with Leonor Michaelis on enzyme kinetics in 1913. The paper has been translated from its written language of German into English.
Go to Profile#938
Alicja Dorabialska
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Alicja Dorabialska , was a Polish chemist. Life Alicja Dorabialska was born in Sosnowiec, Vistula Land, Russian Empire on 14 October 1897. She graduated from a high school in Warsaw in 1914 and then enrolled in the Physical-Mathematical Department of the Moscow Higher Women's Courses the following year, graduating in 1918. Dorabialska received her Ph.D. from the University of Warsaw in 1922 and studied under Marie Curie at the Radium Institute, Paris in 1925. Dorabialska was an assistant in the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Warsaw University of Technology from 1918 to 1932. Two years lat...
Go to Profile#939
Ellen Swallow Richards
1842 - 1911 (69 years)
Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards was an American industrial and safety engineer, environmental chemist, and university faculty member in the United States during the 19th century. Her pioneering work in sanitary engineering, and experimental research in domestic science, laid a foundation for the new science of home economics. She was the founder of the home economics movement characterized by the application of science to the home, and the first to apply chemistry to the study of nutrition.
Go to Profile#940
Sophia Getzowa
1872 - 1946 (74 years)
Sophia Getzowa was a Belarusian-born pathologist and scientist in Mandatory Palestine. She grew up in a Jewish shtetl in Belarus and during her medical studies at the University of Bern, she became engaged to Chaim Weizmann, who would become the first president of Israel. Together they worked in the Zionist movement. After a four-year romance, Weizmann broke off their engagement and Getzowa returned to her medical studies, graduating in 1904. She carried out widely cited research on the thyroid, identifying solid cell nests in 1907.
Go to Profile#941
Astrid Cleve
1875 - 1968 (93 years)
Astrid Maria Cleve von Euler was a Swedish botanist, geologist, chemist and researcher at Uppsala University. She was the first woman in Sweden to obtain a doctoral degree of science. Life Astrid Maria Cleve was born into academic life on 22 January 1875, in Uppsala, Sweden. She was the eldest daughter of the chemist, oceanographer, geologist and professor Per Teodor Cleve and author Carolina Alma "Caralma" Öhbom . Her younger sisters were Agnes Cleve-Jonand , a visual artist and pioneer of Modernism in Sweden and Célie Brunius , a journalist. They received their early education at home from ...
Go to Profile#942
Maria Bakunin
1873 - 1960 (87 years)
Maria Mikhailovna Bakunina was a Russian-Italian chemist and geologist. Born in Siberia, she moved to southern Italy at a young age, taking up chemistry during her education. By the time of her graduation from the University of Naples, she was already a pioneering figure in stereochemistry and made a number of advancements in applied chemistry. During the early 20th century, she carried out a series of geological surveys in the region of Campania, identifying a number of ichthyol deposits for exploitation. With the outbreak of World War II, she continued her work at the University of Naples a...
Go to Profile#943
Mary Letitia Caldwell
1890 - 1972 (82 years)
Mary Letitia Caldwell was an American chemist. Growing up she valued education and strived to achieve. She was an instructor at Western College teaching chemistry. She was known for being unique and descriptive along with being family orientated. Maria was in a wheel chair due to muscular disability. Most of her work centered on amylase, a starch enzyme, most notably finding a method for purifying crystalline porcine pancreatic amylase. She spent sixty years doing this.
Go to Profile#944
Ellen Gleditsch
1879 - 1968 (89 years)
Ellen Gleditsch was a Norwegian radiochemist and Norway's second female professor. Starting her career as an assistant to Marie Curie, she became a pioneer in radiochemistry, establishing the half-life of radium and helping demonstrate the existence of isotopes. She was Vice President of the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights 1937–1939.
Go to Profile#945
Hilda Ingold
1898 - 1988 (90 years)
Edith Hilda, Lady Ingold was a British chemist based in Leeds and London. Her career was unfairly overshadowed by that of her husband. She failed to gain much public recognition, despite being an innovative chemist and partner to her husband in his work on organic chemistry. She was known as Lady Ingold following her husband's knighthood.
Go to Profile#946
Agnes Fay Morgan
1884 - 1968 (84 years)
Agnes Fay Morgan was an American chemist and academic. She was the longtime chair of the home economics program at the University of California. Her program was strongly grounded in science, and students admitted into the program were required to have a level of science education that was not typical of home economics programs at the time. Morgan was one of the earliest married female college professors in the United States.
Go to Profile#947
Josephine Silone Yates
1859 - 1912 (53 years)
Josephine Silone Yates was an American professor, writer, public speaker, and activist. She trained in chemistry and became one of the first black professors hired at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. Upon her promotion, she became the first black woman to head a college science department. She may have been the first black woman to hold a full professorship at any U.S. college or university.
Go to Profile#948
June Sutor
1929 - 1990 (61 years)
Dorothy June Sutor was a New Zealand-born crystallographer who spent most of her research career in England. She was one of the first scientists to establish that hydrogen bonds could form to hydrogen atoms bonded to carbon atoms. She later worked in the laboratory of Kathleen Lonsdale on the characterisation and prevention of urinary calculi.
Go to Profile#949
Katherine Alice Burke
1875 - 1924 (49 years)
Katherine Alice Burke was a British chemist and one of the nineteen signatories of the 1904 petition to the Chemical Society. Early life and education Burke was born in Surrey in 1875. She obtained her BSc. degree from her studies at Bedford College and later Birkbeck, University of London. She graduated in 1899.
Go to Profile#950
María Orosa
1893 - 1945 (52 years)
María Orosa e Ylagan was a Filipina food technologist, pharmaceutical chemist, humanitarian, and war heroine. She experimented with foods native to the Philippines, and during World War II developed Soyalac and Darak , which she also helped smuggle into Japanese-run internment camps that helped save the lives of thousands of Filipinos, Americans, and other nationals. She introduced to the public the well-known banana ketchup.
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