The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
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List of the most influential female people in Chemistry,
#251
Lynda Soderholm
#42575
Overall Influence
Lynda Soderholm is a physical chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory with a specialty in f-block elements. She is a senior scientist and the lead of the Actinide, Geochemistry & Separation Sciences Theme within Argonne's Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division. Her specific role is the Separation Science group leader within Heavy Element Chemistry and Separation Science , directing basic research focused on low-energy methods for isolating lanthanide and actinide elements from complex mixtures. She has made fundamental contributions to understanding f-block ...
Go to Profile#252
Jehane Ragai
#59392
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Jehane Noureldin Ragai is an Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the American University in Cairo . She is the author of the two editions of The Scientist and the Forger. The first edition, published in 2015 by Imperial College Press, was translated into Korean. The second edition, published in 2018 by World Scientific Publishing, was translated into Chinese. Her recent Textbook Technical Art History , published in 2021 by World Scientific Publishing, which she co-authored with Tamer Shoeib has won the "Most Promising New Textbook Award " by the Textbook and Academic Authors Association in th...
Go to Profile#253
Zhu Meifang
#96968
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Zhu Meifang is a Chinese materials scientist, former vice-president of Donghua University, and currently serving as its dean of School of Materials Science and Engineering. Education Zhu was born in Rugao, Jiangsu in August 1965. She earned a bachelor's degree in chemical fiber in 1986, a master's degree in chemical fiber in 1988, and a doctor's degree in materials science in 1999, all from China Textile University .
Go to Profile#254
Christiane Timmel
#104998
Overall Influence
Christiane Renate Timmel is a German chemist who is Director of the Centre for Advanced Electron Spin Resonance at the University of Oxford. Her group make use of electron-spin resonance to understand long-range structures in chemical and biological systems. Timmel was awarded the Tilden Prize on 2020 by the Royal Society of Chemistry for her contributions to electron-spin resonance.
Go to Profile#255
Vanderlan da Silva Bolzani
#100585
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Vanderlan da Silva Bolzani is a Brazilian chemist at the São Paulo State University. She has previously served as president of the Brazilian Chemical Society and was awarded the 2011 American Chemical Society – International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Distinguished Women in Science Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Award.
Go to Profile#256
Jennifer L. West
#83790
Overall Influence
Jennifer L. West is an American bioengineer. She is the current Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. She was the Fitzpatrick University Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University from 2012-2021. In 2000, West cofounded Nanospectra Biosciences in Houston to develop a cancer therapy based on gold nanoparticles that destroy tumor cells and has been listed by MIT Technology Review as one of the 100 most innovative young scientists and engineers world wide.
Go to Profile#257
Marjorie J. Vold
#86054
Overall Influence
1913 - 1991 (78 years)
Marjorie J. Vold was an American chemist. Her research focused on colloids, and was recognized with a Garvan-Olin Medal from the American Chemical Society in 1967. Early life and education Marjorie Jean Young was born on October 25, 1913, in Ottawa, Ontario, and moved to Mount Hamilton, California as a child, with her parents Reynold K. Young and Wilhelmine E. Aitken. Her grandfather Robert Grant Aitken cataloged binary stars at Lick Observatory, and her father also worked an astronomer there. Young attended the University of California at Berkeley for undergraduate and graduate work, earning her doctorate in 1936.
Go to Profile#258
Anne McCoy
#111572
Overall Influence
Anne Bowen McCoy is a theoretical chemist. She is the Natt-Lingafelter Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington, and her research interests include vibrational spectroscopy, hydrogen bonding, and charge-transfer bands. She received the 2023 Jack Simons Award in Theoretical Chemistry “for her development and application of theoretical methods for analyzing the vibrational spectra & dynamics of floppy molecules and clusters.”
Go to Profile#259
Corinna S. Schindler
#78075
Overall Influence
Corinna S. Schindler is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan. She develops catalytic reactions with environmentally benign metals such as iron, towards the synthesis of biologically active small molecules. For her research in the development of new catalysts, Schindler has been honored with several early-career researcher awards including the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship in 2016, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in 2017, and being named a member of the C&EN Talented 12 in 2017. Schindler has served on the Editorial Board of Organic and Bimolecular Chemistry si...
Go to Profile#260
Ijeoma Uchegbu
#49866
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Ijeoma Uchegbu is a Nigerian-British Professor of Pharmacy at University College London where she held the position of Pro-Vice Provost for Africa and the Middle East. She is the Chief Scientific Officer of Nanomerics, a pharmaceutical nanotechnology company specialising in drug delivery solutions for poorly water-soluble drugs, nucleic acids and peptides. She is also a Governor of the Wellcome, a large biomedical research charity. Apart from her highly cited scientific research in Pharmaceutical Nanoscience, Uchegbu is also known for her work in science public engagement and equality and div...
Go to Profile#261
Ann-Christine Albertsson
#113004
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Ann-Christine Albertsson is a Swedish chemist, currently Professor at Royal Institute of Technology and the Editor-in-Chief of American Chemical Society's Biomacromolecules. Her research interest are biomacromolecules and polymers.
Go to Profile#262
Valerie Randle
#50276
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Valerie Randle is a materials engineer who specialised in electron backscatter diffraction, grain boundary engineering, and has written a number of text books on the subject She was Welsh Woman of the Year in 1998 and in the same year was awarded the Rosenhain Award for achievements in Materials Science by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. In 2004 she was invited as a guest of HM the Queen to a luncheon at Buckingham Palace for the 'top 180 female achievers in the country'. From 2008 she has been included in Who's Who. as part of increasing public recognition of scientists. S...
Go to Profile#263
Vassya Bankova
#109235
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Vassya Stefanova Bankova is a Bulgarian chemist and a president of the Bulgarian Phytochemical Society, Correspondent Member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences since 2014. Bankova is a professor and Chief of the Chemistry of Natural Compounds Laboratory, at the Institute of Organic Chemistry with Centre of Phytochemistry , Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She is also an honorary professor on the Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy, Sofia University. She is known as a propolis expert.
Go to Profile#265
Suzanne Blum
#92311
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Suzanne A. Blum is an American professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. Blum works on mechanistic chemistry, most recently focusing on borylation reactions and the development of single-molecule and single-particle fluorescence microscopy to study organic chemistry and catalysis. She received the American Chemical Society's Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 2023.
Go to Profile#266
K. Birgitta Whaley
#64573
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Katherine Birgitta Whaley is a professor of chemistry at the University of California Berkeley and a senior faculty scientist in the Division of Chemical Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. At UC Berkeley, Whaley is the director of the Berkeley Quantum Information and Computation Center, a member of the executive board for the Center for Quantum Coherent Science, and a member of the Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute. At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Whaley is a member of the Quantum Algorithms Team for Chemical Sciences in the research area of resource-efficient algo...
Go to Profile#267
Ka Yee Christina Lee
#39353
Overall Influence
Ka Yee Christina Lee is Executive Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Chemistry University of Chicago. She works on membrane biophysics, including protein–lipid interactions, Alzheimer's disease and respiratory distress syndrome. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and American Physical Society.
Go to Profile#268
Lilia Ann Abron
#72451
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Lilia Ann Abron is an entrepreneur and chemical engineer. In 1972, Abron became the first African American woman to earn a PhD in chemical engineering. Early life Abron was born in Memphis, Tennessee, was the second of four daughters. She was born prematurely, at home, and had to be rushed to the hospital by her aunt in a cab, as ambulances were not available for African Americans at the time.
Go to Profile#269
Kristin Persson
#78738
Overall Influence
Kristin Aslaug Persson is a Swedish/Icelandic American physicist and chemist. She was born in Lund, Sweden, in 1971, to Eva Haettner-Aurelius and Einar Benedikt Olafsson. She is a faculty senior staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Daniel M. Tellep Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at University of California, Berkeley. Currently, she is also the director of the Molecular Foundry, a national user facility managed by the US Department of Energy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Persson is the director and founder of the Materials Project, a multi-national effort to compute the properties of all inorganic materials.
Go to Profile#270
Nguyen TK Thanh
#45712
Overall Influence
Nguyễn Thị Kim Thanh is a professor of Nanomaterials at University College London. She was awarded the 2019 Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her research and efforts toward gender equality.
Go to Profile#271
Rachel O'Reilly
#60472
Overall Influence
Rachel O'Reilly is a British chemist and Professor at the University of Birmingham. She works at the interface of biology and materials, creating polymers that can mimic natural nanomaterials such as viruses and cells. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the Royal Society.
Go to Profile#272
Tatiana Birshtein
#37852
Overall Influence
1928 - 2022 (94 years)
Tatiana Birshtein or Tat'yana Maksimovna Birshtein was a Russian molecular scientist. Birshtein specialised in the physics of polymers. In 2007 she was given the L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.
Go to Profile#273
Kimberly W. Anderson
#33178
Overall Influence
Kimberly W. Anderson is an American chemist. She is the Gill Eminent Professor of Chemical Engineering and Associate Dean for Administration and Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering at the University of Kentucky.
Go to Profile#274
Angela Casini
#98404
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Angela Casini is a medicinal and inorganic chemist who works on metal-based compounds as therapeutic agents. She was awarded the 2012 European Medal for Bio-Inorganic Chemistry and made the 2019 American Chemical Society Inorganic Lecturer.
Go to Profile#275
Christy Haynes
#60726
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Christy Lynn Haynes is a chemist at the University of Minnesota. She works at the interface of analytical, biological, and nanomaterials chemistry. Early life and education Haynes was born in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1977. She completed her undergraduate work at Macalester College, in 1998 with a major in chemistry and minors in mathematics and Spanish. She completed her postbaccalaureate work at Northwestern University completing a master's degree in 1999 and a Ph.D. in 2003 under the direction of Richard P. Van Duyne. Her dissertation, "Fundamentals and Applications of Nanoparticle Optics an...
Go to Profile#276
Françoise Winnik
#109014
Overall Influence
1952 - 2021 (69 years)
Françoise Winnik was a French-born Canadian chemical researcher and professor. She was awarded the in 2015. Winnink was born and raised in France, where she earned her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at the National School of Chemistry in Mulhouse, France in 1973. She finished her master's degree and PhD in Toronto, Canada in 1974 and 1979 respectively. She later became associate professor at the University of Montreal. the chemistry and physics departments at McMaster University in Canada. In 2018 she moved to Finland and worked at the University of Helsinki. She was elected Fo...
Go to Profile#277
Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos
#80019
Overall Influence
1950 - 2019 (69 years)
Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos was a Greek chemical engineer and, at the time of her death, had been the Robert and Marcy Haber Endowed Professor in Energy Sustainability and a distinguished professor at Tufts University. Flytzani-Stephanopoulos had also been the Raytheon Professor of Pollution Prevention at Tufts. She published more than 160 scientific articles with over 14,000 citations as of April 2018. She was a Fellow of AIChE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Institute of Chemical Engineers. She lived in the Greater Boston Area with her husband, Profe...
Go to Profile#278
Valeria Molinero
#108234
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Valeria Paula Molinero is an Argentinian physicist who is the Jack and Peg Simons Endowed Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Utah. Her research investigates the simulation of the behavior of materials. She was awarded the American Physical Society Irving Langmuir Award in Chemical Physics in 2023.
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Janina Altman
#73965
Overall Influence
1931 - 2022 (91 years)
Janina Altman was a Polish-Israeli chemist, author and a Holocaust survivor. Life Janina Hescheles' father, Henryk Hescheles, was a journalist in Lwów and publisher of the Polish-language Zionist periodical Chwila. Her mother was registrar at a hospital on Józef-Dwernicki Street, and after the outbreak of World War II also served as a nurse.
Go to Profile#280
Helma Wennemers
#46250
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Helma B. Wennemers is a German organic chemist. She is a professor of organic chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich . Education Helma Wennemers studied chemistry at the Goethe University Frankfurt, completing her diploma thesis with in 1993. She earned her PhD at Columbia University, New York in 1996, under the supervision of W. Clark Still, with a thesis "Encoded combinatorial chemistry: a tool for the study of selective intermolecular interactions." Between 1996 and 1998, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Nagoya University with Hisashi Yamamoto, before being appointed Bachem Assistant Professor at the University of Basel in 1999.
Go to Profile#281
Edith Kroupa
#114980
Overall Influence
1910 - 1991 (81 years)
Edith Kroupa was a research chemist who utilized microchemical analysis in the laboratory of Professor A. Franke at the University of Vienna. In 1930, Kroupa and Friedrich Hecht analyzed a sample of radioactive rock from the Huron Claim, Manitoba near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The team determined the sample to be over 1,725,000,000 years old.
Go to Profile#282
Joan Brennecke
#112027
Overall Influence
Joan F. Brennecke is an American chemical engineer who is the Cockrell Family Chair in Engineering in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Brennecke develops supercritical fluids, ionic liquids and novel spectroscopic methods.
Go to Profile#283
Silvia Bordiga
#118824
Overall Influence
#284
Rena Bizios
#66713
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Irene Rena Bizios is an American bioengineer. She is the Peter Flawn Professor at University of Texas at San Antonio and the Lutcher Brown Chair Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Bizios is an Elected Fellow of the National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Inventors, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Her current interests are cellular and tissue engineering, biocompability and tissue-biomaterial relationships.
Go to Profile#285
Katherine Franz
#94908
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Katherine J. Franz is the chair of the department of chemistry at Duke University. She studies metal ion coordination in biological systems and looks to use the insight to manage species such as copper and iron. Franz was awarded the American Chemical Society Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences.
Go to Profile#286
Jillian Lee Dempsey
#87217
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Jillian Lee Dempsey is an American inorganic chemist and the Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Currently, her work focuses on proton-coupled electron transfer, charge transfer events, and quantum dots. She is the recipient of numerous awards for rising stars of chemistry, including most recently a 2016 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a 2016 Air Force's Young Investigator Research Program .
Go to Profile#287
Silvia Braslavsky
#42692
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Silvia Elsa Braslavsky is an Argentine chemist. She is the daughter of educationist and biochemist Lázaro Braslavsky, and the sister of Cecilia Braslavsky, educationist and erstwhile director of the International Bureau of Education of UNESCO. She has two daughters, sociologist Paula-Irene Villa Braslavsky and Carolina Klockow.
Go to Profile#288
Susan Perkin
#93287
Overall Influence
Susan Perkin is a British chemist who is a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Oxford. Her research considers the physics of liquids and soft matter. She was awarded the 2016 Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize and named the Soft Matter Lecturer of 2018. In 2015 Perkin was awarded a European Research Council starting grant and in 2020 she was awarded a European Research Council consolidator grant.
Go to Profile#289
Fiona Meldrum
#114037
Overall Influence
Fiona C. Meldrum is a British scientist who is a Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Leeds where she works on bio-inspired materials and crystallisation processes. She won the 2017 Royal Society of Chemistry Interdisciplinary Prize.
Go to Profile#290
Eva-Maria Neher
#36973
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Eva-Maria Neher is a German scientist in the fields of biochemistry and microbiology. She founded the Göttingen Xlab and has been its Executive Director since 2000. The Göttingen Xlab is an experimental laboratory for training young people from student to scientist level. She is married to Erwin Neher who is a Nobel laureate for his Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She is the recipient of many awards including the Lower Saxony State Prize.
Go to Profile#291
Catherine E. Costello
#115482
Overall Influence
Catherine E. Costello is the William Fairfield Warren distinguished professor in the department of biochemistry, Cell Biology and Genomics, and the director of the Center for Biomedical Mass Spectrometry at the Boston University School of Medicine.
Go to Profile#292
Jennifer S. Brodbelt
#112109
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Jennifer S. Brodbelt is an American chemist known for her research using mass spectrometry to characterize organic compounds, especially biopolymers and proteins. Education and career Brodbelt has an undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and earned her Ph.D. from Purdue University where she worked on gas phase ion chemistry using mass spectrometry. Following her Ph.D. she was a postdoc at the University of California, Santa Barbara before joining the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. As of 2016, she is the Roland Pettit Centennial Chair in the Department of Chemistry.
Go to Profile#293
Kyoung-Shin Choi
#88194
Overall Influence
Kyoung-Shin Choi is a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Choi's research focuses on the electrochemical synthesis of electrode materials, for use in electrochemical and photoelectrochemical devices.
Go to Profile#294
Tejal A. Desai
#44094
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Tejal Ashwin Desai is Sorensen Family Dean of Engineering at Brown University. Prior to joining Brown, she was the Deborah Cowan Endowed Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at University of California, San Francisco, Director of the Health Innovations via Engineering Initiative , and head of the Therapeutic Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory. She was formerly an associate professor at Boston University and an assistant professor at University of Illinois at Chicago . She is a researcher in the area of therapeutic micro and nanotechnology and has authored ...
Go to Profile#295
Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede
#107988
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (56 years)
Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede is a Swedish biophysical chemist, born in 1968, who is a professor of chemical biology at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. In 2019 she was named by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry as a Distinguished Woman in Chemistry.
Go to Profile#296
Lara Mahal
#47600
Overall Influence
Lara K. Mahal is an American chemist who is the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Glycomics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is also a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Alberta. She is notable both for her pioneering work establishing lectin microarrays as a new technology for glycomics, her work on miRNA regulation of glycosylation and her graduate work with Carolyn R. Bertozzi on unnatural carbohydrate incorporation. Work in her laboratory focuses on understanding the role of carbohydrates in human health using systems- and chemical biology-based ap...
Go to Profile#297
Winnie Wong-Ng
#40814
Overall Influence
Winnie Kwai-Wah Wong-Ng is a Chinese-American physical chemist. She is a research chemist at the ceramics division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her research includes energy applications, crystallography, thermoelectric standards, metrology, and data, sorbent materials for sustainability, and high throughput combinatorial approach for novel materials discovery and property optimization for energy conversion applications. She is a fellow of the International Centre for Diffraction Data, American Ceramic Society, American Crystallographic Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#298
Kimberly Prather
#107893
Overall Influence
Kimberly A. Prather is an American atmospheric chemist. She is a distinguished chair in atmospheric chemistry and a distinguished professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and department of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego. Her work focuses on how humans are influencing the atmosphere and climate. In 2019, she was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for technologies that transformed understanding of aerosols and their impacts on air quality, climate, and human health. In 2020, she was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She is also ...
Go to Profile#299
Julia Kalow
#115236
Overall Influence
Julia Ann Kalow is an assistant professor of chemistry at Northwestern University. She is primarily a synthetic chemist, who works on polymers, photochemistry and tissue engineering. She is interested in synthetic strategies that can turn molecular structure and chemical reactivity into macroscopic properties. She has been awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Thieme Award and was selected by the University of Chicago as a Rising Star in Chemistry.
Go to Profile#300
Jennifer Garden
#90875
Overall Influence
Jennifer "Jenni" A. Garden is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, where she leads a research group investigating how catalyst design and organometallic chemistry can be used to develop sustainable and degradable plastics using renewable sources.
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