Search People Result | Academic Influence

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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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Computer Science,

#1801

Julia Smith

#111978

Overall Influence

1927 - 1997 (70 years)

Julia Cuthbert Smith was an English television director and producer. She is best known for being the co-creator of the BBC soap opera EastEnders, also working as a director and the first producer of the series.

#1802

Hilda Cerdeira

#177521

Overall Influence

Hilda Alicia Gómez de Cerdeira is an Argentine mathematical physicist whose research concerns nonlinear systems and the synchronization of chaos. She is a retired professor at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of São Paulo State University in Brazil.

#1803

Nancy J. Troy

#123705

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Nancy J. Troy is Victoria and Roger Sant Professor in Art at Stanford University. She was previously professor of modern art and chair of art history at the University of Southern California until 2010. Troy is a specialist in modern European art and has written books on the De Stijl movement, modernism and the decorative arts in France, and the works of Piet Mondrian.

#1804

Zita Cabello-Barrueto

#173753

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Zita Cabello-Barrueto is a professor at San Francisco State University in San Francisco, California. She teaches classes on U.S. intervention in other countries, especially her native Chile. A staunch opponent of torture, Zita has made two films on the subject. She strongly opposes George W. Bush's stance against John McCain's anti-torture bill; Bush objects to the bill because it does not exempt the CIA. Her disdain for torture comes from her personal experience under Chile's CIA-initiated coup d'état and ensuing 17-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. The regime jailed, tortured, and murdered her brother in the 1970s.

#1805

Sholeh Maani

#102137

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Sholeh Maani is a New Zealand economics academic. She is a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career Maani is the first female Professor of Economics at the University of Auckland. She is a specialist in applied microeconomics, in particular the economics of the labour market, and the economics of education. Sholeh has a PhD degree in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After completing her PhD, titled A Study of Female Labor Force Participation and Fertility: A Cross-Cultural Approach, she moved to the University of Auckland, rising to full profe...

#1806

Joanna Clark

#137842

Overall Influence

1978 - 2022 (44 years)

Joanna Clark was professor of environmental science at the University of Reading. She worked on aspects of carbon and water cycles in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems from test-tube to catchment scale. She is founder and was director of the Loddon Observatory, which aims to bring together academia, charities, public sector and business to support sustainable societies.

#1807

Sonia Arriaga

#185550

Overall Influence

Sonia Lorena Arriaga García is a Mexican biological engineer specializing in the bioremediation of hydrocarbon-based pollution, and in techniques for removing bioaerosols from indoor environments. She is a professor and researcher at the Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica , in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

#1808

Maribel Rios

#171487

Overall Influence

Maribel Rios is a neuroscientist originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She received a Bachelor of Arts in neuroscience from Boston University, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology from the Sackler School at Tufts University. Rios continued her studies by attending the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she completed her post-doctoral training in genetics. Following her education, she returned to Tufts where she serves as a professor of neuroscience.

#1809

Monica Malta

#179399

Overall Influence

Monica Malta is a Brazilian researcher who works mostly to address health inequalities faced by LGBTQ persons. She is currently a professor at the University of Toronto and a scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She was elected a TED fellow in 2022.

#1810

Antoinette Lombard

#184069

Overall Influence

Antoinette Lombard is the Head of the Department of Social Work and Criminology and a Professor in Social Work at the University of Pretoria. She is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. She was awarded the James Billups International Consortium for Social Development Leadership Award in Social Development prize in 2013. She is the Programme Director of the Fordham University’s Ubuntu Exchange Programme with the University of Pretoria. She is the Chairperson of Global Agenda Committee in International Association of Schools of Social Work.

#1811

Ashley C. Ford

#116839

Overall Influence

Ashley C. Ford is an American writer, podcaster and educator who discusses topics including race, sexuality, and body image. She is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Somebody's Daughter. She has been the host of five podcasts and has written or guest-edited for publications including The Guardian, Elle, BuzzFeed, and New York. In 2017, Forbes named her one of their "30 Under 30 in Media". In 2022, Ford won the Indiana Authors Award for a debut novel.

#1812

Kathryn Toghill

#189303

Overall Influence

Kathryn Toghill is a British chemist who is Professor of Sustainable Electrochemistry at Lancaster University. Her research considers the development of low-cost energy storage systems, with a particular focus on redox flow batteries.

#1813

Li Dongxu

#176675

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Li Dongxu is a Chinese female scientist and professor at the National University of Defense Technology. Honours and awards November 22, 2019 Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

#1814

Lori Diachin

#186879

Overall Influence

Lori Ann Diachin is an American computer scientist specializing in scientific computing, mesh generation, mesh improvement, and interoperability. She works in the Computation Directorate of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she is Deputy Associate Director for Science and Technology, and Deputy Director of the Exascale Computing Project.

#1815

Hind Rassam Culhane

#44429

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Hind Rassam Culhane is an Iraqi-born American educator and former journalist. Early life and education Rassam Culhane was born in Mosul, Iraq, to an Iraqi-Assyrian father and a Lebanese mother. As a child, she and her family moved to the United States. Rassam Culhane studied at Cazenovia College before earning a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in early childhood education from Rockford College.

#1816

Sigrid Schmitz

#98660

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Sigrid Schmitz is a visiting professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and was formerly the chair of gender studies and scientific head of the Gender Research Office [Referat Genderforschung] at the University of Vienna. Schmitz is also a member of The NeuroGenderings Network.

#1817

Josephine Ho

#108708

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Josephine Chuen-juei Ho is the chair of the English department of National Central University, Taiwan, and coordinator of its Center For the Study of Sexualities. She has withstood lawsuits directed at her outspokenness on gender and rights issues. She is one of the most known feminist scholars in Taiwan. She is called "the godmother of the Taiwanese queer movement."

#1818

Jane Wilhelms

#188462

Overall Influence

Jane Patricia Wilhelms was an American biologist and computer scientist known for her contributions to computer graphics, including work on anatomical simulation of humans and animals and collision detection in computer animation, and isosurfaces and volume rendering in scientific visualization. She was a professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

#1819

Maud Morgan

#98102

Overall Influence

1903 - 1999 (96 years)

Maud Morgan was an American modern artist and teacher who is best known for her abstract expressionism. She mentored Frank Stella and Carl Andre, and had art pieces shown alongside such notable contemporaries as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Morgan's life began in New York City to an aristocratic family. She was also known as Boston's Modernist Doyenne.

#1820

Merlin Stone

#13378

Overall Influence

1931 - 2011 (80 years)

Merlin Stone was an American author, artist and academic. She was an important thinker of the feminist theology and Goddess movements and is known for her book When God Was a Woman. Biography Merlin Stone was born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York. She attended P.S. 217 and Erasmus Hall High School, where she graduated in 1949 with a Metallic Art Medal Award. After enrolling at the University of Buffalo later that year and marrying in 1950, she continued her studies while raising her children, ultimately earning a B.S. and teaching certificate in art from the institution in 1958. She became in...

#1821

Kogila Moodley

#78437

Overall Influence

Kogila Moodley is a published academic and sociologist at the University of British Columbia, where she was the first holder of the David Lam Chair of Multicultural Studies. She serves on the board of directors of the International Sociological Association's Race Relations Committee, and was its President from .

#1822

Else Øyen

#153925

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Professor Else Øyen was educated as a sociologist. Education and career She became a professor of social policy in 1975 at the University of Bergen, Norway, and shifted her later research focus to comparative poverty studies within an interdisciplinary framework. She initiated the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty in 1991. In a few years, it became one of the major programmes under the International Social Science Council . The foremost aim of CROP was to provide a scientific framework for the understanding of the many facets of poverty and to create an international arena where pover...

#1823

Naomi B. Lynn

#52264

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Naomi Burgos Lynn was the first Hispanic woman president of an American public university. She served as president of Sangamon State University in Springfield, Illinois, beginning in 1991 and through its entrance into the University of Illinois system as the University of Illinois Springfield. She retired as chancellor of UIS in 2001. At her retirement the Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair for Lincoln Studies was created at the University of Illinois Springfield, where Dr. Phillip Paludan served as its first recipient.

#1824

Rita Sanchez

#111471

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Rita Sanchez is an American academic in the field of Chicana/o studies. Sanchez' family roots are in Bernalillo, New Mexico, but her grandfather took a second home in San Bernardino in 1910 because of his work with the Southern Pacific Railroad, and sold the Bernalillo home in 1919. Rita Sanchez was born in San Bernardino on May 20, 1937, the seventh of eleven children. She graduated from San Bernardino High School in 1956 and studied journalism at San Jose State University as one of the first Mexican-Americans to attend college, but did not finish her degree. She returned to college in the 1970s as a single mother of two daughters, earning a B.A.

#1825

Janet Wilson

#95479

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Janet M. Wilson is a UK-based New Zealand academic who specialises in post colonial New Zealand literature. Academic career Janet Mary Wilson is Emerita Professor of English and Postcolonial Studies, Faculty of Arts, Science and Humanities, University of Northampton and editor of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing and on the board of the Journal of New Zealand Literature.

#1826

Ivanka Popović

#72900

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Ivanka Popović is a Serbian professor and the incumbent rector of the University of Belgrade since October 1, 2018. She authored and co-authored more than 85 scientific documents. Biography She was born in Rio de Janeiro to a prominent family, her father was Yugoslav ambassador and diplomat and her grandfather was Daka Popović, a member of the . She studied chemical engineering at the University of Maryland, she finished her studies at Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy of the University of Belgrade, where she earned her doctorate. She became a professor at the University of Belgrade in 2001.

#1827

Gonda Van Steen

Gonda Van Steen

#124454

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Gonda Aline Hector Van Steen is a Belgian-American classical scholar and linguist, who specialises in ancient and modern Greek language and literature. Since 2018, she has been Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature, the first woman to hold this position, and Director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College London. She previously held the Cassas Chair in Greek Studies at the University of Florida, and taught at the University of Arizona and at Cornell University. She has also served as the President of the Modern Greek Studies Association...

#1828

C. K. Gunsalus

#73790

Overall Influence

C. K. Gunsalus is the Director of the National Center for Principled Leadership and Research Ethics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, in addition to being a Research Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory and Professor Emerita in the College of Business.

#1829

Anna Van Meter

#160034

Overall Influence

Anna Van Meter is an American clinical psychologist. She is on the faculty of New York University Grossman School of Medicine in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She leads the Investigating Mood Pathology: Assessment, Course, Treatment Lab. Van Meter and her team conduct research on mood disorders and associated clinical phenomena, including suicide. They focus on innovative, technology-based approaches to improve the rapid identification of symptoms in youth and to facilitate access to evidence-based care.

#1830

Alice Brown

#179412

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Alice Brown is a Scottish academic who is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Edinburgh and Chancellor of the University of Abertay as of 2019. She was on the consultative steering group that advised on procedural aspects when the new Scottish Parliament was being set up. Her work included promoting the equal representation of women. She was the first Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, serving for two terms between 2002 and 2009, and was a member of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council 2008–2012. She was a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life 1998–...

#1831

Camille Martin

#100942

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Camille Martin is a Canadian poet and collage artist. After residing in New Orleans for fourteen years, in 2005 she moved to Toronto following Hurricane Katrina. Biography Early life and education Camille Martin was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, in 1956 and spent most of her childhood in Lafayette, Louisiana. In 1980 she earned a Master of Music in Piano Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music. In 1996 she received a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the University of New Orleans. Her thesis, a collection of poems entitled at peril, passed with distinction. In 2003 she received a PhD in English from Louisiana State University.

#1832

Ana Torvisco

#190393

Overall Influence

#1833

Deborah F. Kelly

#174700

Overall Influence

Deborah F. Kelly is an American biomedical engineer who is a professor at Pennsylvania State University. Her research makes use of cryogenic electron microscopy to better understand human development and disease. She serves as President of the Microscopy Society of America.

#1834

Nikki Bart

#97209

Overall Influence

Nikki Bart is an Australian mountain climber and medical doctor with a specialist interest in hypoxia secondary to high altitude. She and her mother, Cheryl Bart, were the first mother-daughter team to summit Mount Everest and complete the Seven Summits.

#1835

Marcia Resnick

#84430

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Marcia Resnick is an American photographer, author, and graphic artist. She was born and lives in New York City. Publications and exhibitions Resnick's book of photographs and text, Punks, Poets, and Provocateurs:New York City Bad Boys, 1977-1982, published November 10, 2015, has an Afterword written by Anthony Haden-Guest, and a contribution by Victor Bockris. An earlier book, published in 1978 by Resnick was Re-visions, which is now out of print.

#1836

Evgenya Simakov

#188466

Overall Influence

Evgenya Ivanovna Simakov is a Russian-American physicist whose research has involved photonic crystals, metamaterials with engineered band gaps that can be used to suppress unwanted resonances in particle accelerators. She has also worked on the design of small portable particle accelerators, and the use of nanoscale arrays of diamonds to control the shape of electron beams. She is a researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

#1837

Ruth Horsting

#172405

Overall Influence

1919 - 2000 (81 years)

Ruth Horsting, also known as Ma Renu was an American sculptor, professor, author, community organizer, philanthropist, and a student of Ashtanga Yoga. She is known for her bronze and steel sculptures, and taught at the University of California, Davis from 1959 to 1971. Horsting was the first female sculptor hired in the entire University of California system.

#1838

Ximena Aguilera

#68591

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Ximena Paz Aguilera Sanhueza is a Chilean physician and politician, currently serving as her country's Minister of Health since 6 September 2022. Biography Ximena Aguilera is the daughter of journalist and radio host . In 1987, she graduated as a surgeon from the University of Chile, from where she also holds a master's degree in public health. Aguilera was head of the Epidemiology Division of the Ministry of Health of Chile between 1999 and 2005, and then served as head of the Health Planning Division of the Ministry of Health until 2008. Between 2008 and 2010, she served as Senior Advisor f...

#1839

Suzy Styles

#190458

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

#1840

Kate Diesfeld

#126133

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Kate Diesfeld is a New Zealand health law academic. She is currently a full professor at the Auckland University of Technology. Academic career After earning a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Colgate University in New York in 1982, Diesfeld received a Juris Doctor from the University of San Diego in 1988 and was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1989. Between 1993 and 2000, Diesfeld worked at Kent Law School and before the Mental Health Review Tribunal in England before moving to Auckland University of Technology, then the University of Waikato in New Zealand and then back to A...

#1841

Jeanne Liotta

#169757

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Jeanne Liotta is an American visual artist who is primarily known for her experimental films. She is also currently a professor of film studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. She lives between New York City and Colorado.

#1842

Celine Marmion

#110612

Overall Influence

Celine J. Marmion is a Professor of Chemistry at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and President of the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland. Marmion is involved with the design of new chemotherapeutic drugs.

#1843

Unoma Ndili Okorafor

Unoma Ndili Okorafor

#182385

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Unoma Ndili Okorafor is a Nigerian computer scientist and entrepreneur. Okorafor founded Working to Advance African Women, a non-profit that supports the education of African women in science, technology, engineering, and math in 2007. She is the chief executive officer at Herbal Goodness and Fairview Data Technologies. She is the fifth child of Frank Nwachukwu Ndili, the first Nigerian nuclear physicist and the 7th Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

#1844

Rita Donagh

#44759

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Rita Donagh is a British artist, known for her realistic paintings and painstaking draughtsmanship. Early life and education Rita Donagh began taking classes in life drawing at Bilston College of Further Education in 1954. She studied fine arts at the University of Durham. Donagh taught at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne where she met Richard Hamilton, whom she later married. She also taught at the University of Reading, the Slade School of Art, and Goldsmiths, University of London.

#1845

Jane Greer

#71065

Overall Influence

1924 - 2001 (77 years)

Jane Greer was an American film and television actress best known for her role as femme fatale Kathie Moffat in the 1947 film noir Out of the Past. In 2009, The Guardian named her one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.

#1846

Helen Dannetun

#34243

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Helen Dannetun is a Swedish professor of physics and rector of Linköping University. In 1980 Helen Dannetun received a Master of Science in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Linköping University, Sweden, and in 1987 a doctoral degree in applied physics. In 1996, she became an associate professor and in 1994 a senior lecturer. In 2002, she was appointed as a professor of physics at Linköping University.

#1847

Petra Vinšová

#189719

Overall Influence

1991 - Present (33 years)

Petra Vinšová is a Czech curler. At the national level, she is a three-time Czech mixed champion . Personal life As of 2020, she is a PhD candidate in polar science. Teams Women's Mixed Mixed doubles

#1848

Senjuti Saha

#80489

Overall Influence

Senjuti Saha is a Bangladeshi scientist at the Child Health Research Foundation , and board member of the Polio Transition Independent Monitoring Board of the World Health Organization . She is known for her lead on decoding the genome of SARS-CoV2 in Bangladesh.

#1849

Carla Restrepo

#176266

Overall Influence

Carla Restrepo is a professor in the biology department of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. Her research focuses on the study of tropical landscapes, including the processes underlying their large-scale dynamics.

#1850

Eleanore Mikus

#89740

Overall Influence

1927 - 2017 (90 years)

Eleanore Mikus was an American artist who began painting in the late 1950s in the Abstract Expressionist mode. By the early 1960s, she was creating monochromatic paintings with geometric patterns that according to Luis Camnitzer, “could be seen as conforming to the Minimalist aesthetic of the era while emphatically contradicting that style’s emotional distance and coldness.” In 1969, she began painting simple, cartoon-like images in bold, colorful strokes that anticipated Neo-Expressionism of the early 1980s. In the mid-1980s, Mikus resumed creating her abstract works. Since 1961, she has a...

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