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 Computer Science,
#1951
Parveen Kumar
#21309
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Dame Parveen June Kumar is a British doctor who is currently Professor of Medicine and Education at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. She worked in the NHS for over 40 years as a consultant gastroenterologist and physician at Barts and the London Hospitals and the Homerton University Hospital. She was the President of the British Medical Association in 2006, of the Royal Society of Medicine from 2010 to 2012, of the Medical Women's Federation from 2016 to 2018 and of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund from 2013 to 2020. She was also Vice President of the Royal College of Physicians from 2003 to 2005.
Go to Profile#1952
Uzo Iwobi
#76329
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Uzoamaka Linda Iwobi FLSW is a British-Nigerian solicitor and equalities practitioner. She is the former Specialist Policy Adviser on Equalities to the Welsh Government, an Honorary Fellow at the University of Wales Trinity St David and founder, secretary and former chief executive officer at Race Council Cymru. She is also Vice President of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.
Go to Profile#1953
Amanda M. Hulse-Kemp
#189284
Overall Influence
Amanda M. Hulse-Kemp is a computational biologist with the United States Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service. She works in the Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Unit and is stationed on the North Carolina State University campus in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Go to Profile#1954
Pamela A Tamez
#191571
Overall Influence
#1955
Nidaa Badwan
#180988
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (37 years)
Nidaa Badwan is a Palestinian artist who was born in the United Arab Emirates. She moved to Gaza when she was in sixth grade, and spent a year working in Amman after completing her fine arts degree at a Palestinian university.
Go to Profile#1956
Jayashree Ramadas
#117510
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Jayashree Ramadas is an Indian educationist. She was the Centre Director of Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education , a National Centre of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. In her capacity as a professor she teaches graduate courses related to cognition and science education. She is also a member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and International Committee on Physics Education. Ramadas was appointed Dean, HBCSE, in November, 2008, and in June 2011, was appointed the Centre Director. She is currently Professor at the TIFR Centre for Interdisc...
Go to Profile#1957
Anna Smith
#182250
Overall Influence
Anna Smith is an English film reporter, former chair of the London Film Critics' Circle, and host of the Girls on Film podcast. She has contributed to the BBC, Sky News, Time Out, the Guardian and The Film Review.
Go to Profile#1958
Beena Sarwar
#172754
Overall Influence
Beena Sarwar is a Pakistani journalist, artist and filmmaker focusing on human rights, gender, media and peace. She resides in Boston and is currently Editor of the Aman ki Asha initiative, that aims to develop peace between the countries of India and Pakistan. The initiative is jointly sponsored by the Jang group in Pakistan and the Times of India across the border. In March 2021, she founded the Southasia Peace Action Network or Sapan along with other peace activists from across South Asia. In August 2022, Sapan informally launched Sapan News Network, a news and features syndicated service in the making.
Go to Profile#1959
Mary Macqueen
#115433
Overall Influence
1912 - 1994 (82 years)
Mary McCartney Macqueen was an Australian artist who was known for her drawing, printmaking and mixed media works on paper. Her artistic style was expressive, gestural and experimental. Life, training and influences Macqueen was born Mary McCartney Ballantine, elder daughter of Mr and Mrs A. D. Ballantine, in Carlton, Victoria, on 29 January 1912. Inspired by her grandmother's drawings, and encouraged by her parents, she developed a love for drawing from early childhood. Her primary and secondary schooling was at the Princes Hill State School, Mount Albert Central School and the Methodist Ladies College in Melbourne.
Go to Profile#1960
Yiyan Wang
#181996
Overall Influence
Yiyan Wang is a New Zealand Chinese academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the Victoria University of Wellington. Academic career After a 1999 PhD titled 'Narrating China : Defunct capital and the fictional world of Jia Pingwa' at the University of Sydney, Wang moved to the Victoria University of Wellington, rising to full professor in 2015.
Go to Profile#1961
Lacey Wallace
#120332
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Lacey M Wallace is an archaeologist and Senior Lecturer in Roman History and Material Culture at the University of Lincoln. Biography Wallace complete undergraduate studies at Boston University in 2004 before attending Queens' College, Cambridge to complete her PhD in archaeology in 2011. She worked as a research associate in Roman archaeology at Cambridge before joining the University of Lincoln in 2016. Wallace was elected as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 26 June 2021.
Go to Profile#1962
Satwant Pasricha
#15445
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (123 years)
Satwant Pasricha is the head of Department of Clinical Psychology at NIMHANS, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences at Bangalore. She also worked for a time at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in the USA. Pasricha investigates reincarnation and near-death experiences. Pasricha co-authored the 2011 book Making sense of near-death experiences, which was Highly Commended in the Psychiatry category at the 2012 British Medical Association Book Awards.
Go to Profile#1963
Debbie Sell
#27089
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Debbie Sell, OBE, FRCSLT is a leading British speech and language therapist. Life and career Sell qualified in 1976 with a diploma in speech pathology and therapeutics from the College of Education in Leicester. Her first appointment as a speech therapist was at Whipps Cross Hospital, where she worked from 1976 to 1978. Between 1978 and 1981, she worked at St. Georges Hospital, Tooting, London. In 1981 she moved to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and was appointed head of the department of speech and language therapy in 1996. She gained her Ph.D. in 1992 from De Montfort University for...
Go to Profile#1964
Karine Sargsyan
#190877
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Karine Sargsyan is an Armenian-Austrian medical doctor, geneticist, research manager, biobanker, researcher, and educator. She currently serves as the Scientific Director of Oncobiobank at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, California, US, and Managing Director for International Biobanking and Education at Medical University of Graz, Austria, since 2019. She is also an initiator and Vice Scientific Leader, and Lecturer of the first Bologna conform M.Sc. Biobanking since 2016 and University Course Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at the Medical University of Graz starting in 2022.
Go to Profile#1965
Gloria Chisum
#117052
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
Gloria Twine Chisum is an experimental psychologist who eventually became a board member of the American Psychological Association, among many other organizations. An expert in visual problems associated with the operation of high-performance aircraft, she developed eyewear to protect pilots' eyes in extreme conditions like sharp turns, lightning, or nuclear explosion.
Go to Profile#1966
Patricia Collarbone
#136378
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Dame Patricia Collarbone DBE, FRSA is a British educationist, writer and speaker. She was the founding director of the London Leadership Centre and of Creating Tomorrow Ltd, a consultancy focused on leadership development and delivering self-sustaining change programmes. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1997 for services to Education.
Go to Profile#1967
Cheryl J. Sanders
#62614
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Cheryl J. Sanders is an African-American professor and scholar of Christian Ethics. Her work on womanist ethics has been influential in the development of the field. She teaches Christian Ethics at Howard University School of Divinity. Her books include Ministry at the Margins, Saints in Exile: The Holiness Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion, and Empowerment Ethics for a Liberated People: A Path to African American Social Transformation.
Go to Profile#1968
Claire Ozanne
#62638
Overall Influence
Claire Ozanne is an insect ecologist in the UK, she is Professor of Ecology and Vice-Chancellor & Rector of Liverpool Hope University. Education and career Ozanne was educated at the University of Oxford where she gained a BA and then a DPhil in Agriculture and Forest Sciences graduating in 1991.
Go to Profile#1969
Caroline Woolard
#40963
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (40 years)
Caroline Woolard is an American artist and organizer, whose work explores intersections between art and the solidarity economy. She primarily works collaboratively and collectively and was a founding member of Trade School, OurGoods, BFAMFAPhD and the New York City Real Estate Investment Cooperative. Woolard previously worked as an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Hartford and a mentor at the School of Visual Arts. She is now working for Open Collective and Open Collective Foundation.
Go to Profile#1970
Sara Osuna
#157224
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Sara Osuna Acedo has a PhD in Philosophy and Education Sciences by Spain's Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia . Career At UNED, she is a Professor of Communication and Education, teaching on Pedagogics and Social Education undergraduate programs. Her expertise mainly focuses on digital technologies, Communication Models and eLearning.
Go to Profile#1971
Louise Gagnon-Arguin
#188056
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Louise Gagnon-Arguin is a Canadian archivist. Early life Gagnon-Arguin was born in 1941 in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec. Education Between 1958 and 1960, she audited librarianship courses at the Université de Montreal. She graduated with her B.A. in history in 1973, and her M.A. in history in 1978, and her PhD in history in 1990, all from Université de Laval.
Go to Profile#1972
Nathalie Obadia
#42890
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Nathalie Obadia is a French art gallery owner. She specialises in contemporary art. Early life She was born in Toulouse, France. As a teenager, Nathalie Obadia completed an internship at Daniel Varenne, in Genova, and Adrien Maeght, in Paris. She studied a master's degree in Law at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, then worked at the Galerie Daniel Templon from 1988 to 1992.
Go to Profile#1973
Evelyn Gitau
#60545
Overall Influence
Evelyn Nungari Gitau is a Kenyan cellular immunologist at the African Academy of Sciences, and was named a Next Einstein Fellow. Early life and education Gitau grew up in the Dagoretti area of Nairobi, Kenya. She attended The Kenya High School, where she developed a passion for chemistry, and would spend her free time at the chemistry lab at the University of Nairobi where her best friend's father was the head of the Chemistry department. After graduating high school, she was selected for the inaugural medicine class at Moi University but chose to study chemistry instead.
Go to Profile#1974
Elizabeth Kjellstrand Hartwig
#191761
Overall Influence
#1975
Maria X
#178049
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Maria Chatzichristodoulou , also known as Maria X, is a Greek cultural practitioner who has served as a curator, producer, painter, performer, writer, and community organizer. Education She received her undergraduate degree in Theater Studies from the University of Patras, Greece, graduating with first class honors.
Go to Profile#1976
Arminda Schutte
#168567
Overall Influence
1909 - 1995 (86 years)
Arminda Schutte was a Cuban classical pianist and pedagogue. Life Early life and training Schutte was born in the farm of La Merced located near Matanzas City, Cuba, to a well-educated high middle-class family. Her father, Julio Schutte, was of French origin and insisted that when at home the family would speak only French; this would prove to be invaluable later. Her Cuban mother, Ondina Visiedo, had a teaching degree. Schutte's mother was strongly determined to see her three children excel in life. Schutte's two brothers grew to become physicians prominent both in Cuba and in Pan-American medical societies.
Go to Profile#1977
Annis May Timpson
#115339
Overall Influence
Annis May Timpson is the former director of the Centre for Canadian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She is a graduate of the Universities of Bristol , Oxford and Toronto . Her current research interests include Aboriginality and governance, territorial politics and intergovernmental relations, gender and public policy, social movements and human rights.
Go to Profile#1978
Maud Eduards
#69036
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Maud Elisabeth Landby Eduards is a Swedish political scientist and gender studies scholar. She is professor emerita of political science at Stockholm University. Eduards earned her PhD in 1985 with a dissertation on regional cooperation between Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya in the period 1962–1984. In 1996 she was appointed as professor of political science at Stockholm University. She was also professor of gender studies at the University of Oslo's Centre for Women's Studies/Centre for Women's and Gender Studies from 1999 to 2004. She is known for her research on women, peace and security policy.
Go to Profile#1979
Hélène Velasco-Graciet
#98754
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Hélène Velasco-Graciet is a French professor of geography and was the president of the Bordeaux Montaigne University from 2016 to 2020. Velascho-Graciet's work has touched on geography, borders, and culture.
Go to Profile#1980
Allyson Clay
#169008
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Allyson Clay is a Canadian visual artist, curator, and educator based in Vancouver, B.C. Life Clay was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1953, and spent much of her childhood and adolescence in Italy. She obtained a BFA in Painting from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1980, and an MFA from the University of British Columbia in 1985. She was a professor at the School of the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.
Go to Profile#1981
Helena Groot
#73119
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Helena Groot de Restrepo is a Colombian microbiologist and geneticist. She is a full professor in the Biological Sciences Department and the Medicine School at Universidad de los Andes. Since 1984 she has been the Human Genetics Laboratory director and her research has focused on cancer molecular epidemiology, genetic toxicology and environmental mutagenesis. She is one of the eight women members of the Colombian Academy of Sciences .
Go to Profile#1982
Vanalyne Green
#101201
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Vanalyne Green is an American artist who also teaches and writes about culture. She has screened her video work extensively in the United States and abroad, including The Whitney Biennial , American Film Institute, Rotterdam International Film Festival, the Videotheque de Paris, The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, The Guggenheim Museum and many other museums, universities and film festivals. She has received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, as well as grants from Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation, the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation , the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council of the Arts, and a Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome .
Go to Profile#1983
Jennifer Reeder
#180697
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Jennifer Reeder is an American artist, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Her short film A Million Miles Away was nominated for a Tiger Award for Short Films at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and screened at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Short Narrative Films category. In 2003, she had a solo screening at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. She received a Rockefeller Grant for New Media in 2002 and a Creative Capital grant in 2015 to support the production of her first experimental feature-length film, Knives and Skin. She won a 2018–19 SFFILM Rainin Grant for scriptwriting, and was the 2019 recipient of the Alpert Film Award residency at the MacDowell Colony.
Go to Profile#1984
Sreyashi Jhumki Basu
#63511
Overall Influence
1977 - 2008 (31 years)
Sreyashi Jhumki Basu was a professor of Science Education at New York University who is best known for her work to encourage urban minority students to succeed through the study of science. Background Basu attended Stanford University, where she received a B.A. in Human Biology in 1998 and completed her doctorate in Science Education at Teachers College, Columbia University in 2006. For her PhD thesis titled How urban youth express critical agency in a 9th grade conceptual physics classroom, she received the Outstanding Dissertation Award in Division K from the American Educational Research ...
Go to Profile#1985
Magda Cordell McHale
#18670
Overall Influence
1921 - 2008 (87 years)
Magda Cordell McHale was a Hungarian artist, futurist, and educator. She was a founding member of the Independent Group which was a British movement that originated Pop Art which grew out of a fascination with American mass culture and post-WWII technologies. Later, she was a faculty member in the University at Buffalo School of Architecture & Planning.
Go to Profile#1986
Stephanie Peay
#169294
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Stephanie Peay is a British ecologist and crayfish researcher. Life and work Peay studied at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Hull, and in 2014 was awarded a PhD by the University of Leeds. She is a member of the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management and a Chartered Environmentalist.
Go to Profile#1987
Stefanie Tschegg
#176855
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Stefanie Tschegg is an emeritus at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. Life Tschegg received her doctoral degree from the University of Vienna in 1971. From 1980 to 1981, she was a visiting associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She finished her habilitation in physics in 1982. In 1989, she became a professor of physics at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna.
Go to Profile#1988
Kay Dian Kriz
#160072
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Kay Dian Kriz is professor emerita of art and architecture at Brown University. She is a specialist in British landscape painting and the visual culture of British colonialism and West Indian slavery.
Go to Profile#1989
Laerke Recht
#191905
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Laerke Recht is a Professor of Early Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Graz. Recht’s research focuses on the archaeology of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean. Her most recent project is “The Spirited Horse: Human-equid relations in the Bronze Age Near East.”
Go to Profile#1990
Berrin Yanıkkaya
#178851
Overall Influence
Berrin Yanıkkaya is a full professor at the Yeditepe University in Turkey. Academic career After a 2004 PhD at titled 'Women voices in the city women's self-expression through cultural products in istanbul after 1990s ' at the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University , she worked as professor at Yeditepe University in Turkey before moving to the Auckland University of Technology as full professor. She left AUT at the end of 2018.
Go to Profile#1991
Suzy Castor
#48087
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Suzy Castor is a Haitian historian, educator and human rights activist. She was born in Port-au-Prince and studied social sciences at the École normale supérieure there. In Haiti in 1958 she got a diploma in social sciences from the Higher Normal School of Haiti. Castor earned a PhD in history from the National Autonomous University of Mexico . While living in exile in Mexico, she was a professor of political science and of philosophy and letters at UNAM from 1968 to 1986. In the latter year, following the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, Castor and her husband Gérard Pierre-Charles returned to Haiti.
Go to Profile#1992
Amy Beegle
#191917
Overall Influence
#1993
Jean LaMarr
#99871
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Jean LaMarr is a Northern Paiute/Achomawi artist and activist from California. She creates murals, prints, dioramas, sculptures, and interactive installations. She is an enrolled citizen of the Susanville Indian Rancheria.
Go to Profile#1994
Erouscilla Joseph
#180850
Overall Influence
Erouscilla "Pat" Joseph is a volcanologist, and Director of the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre, which oversees seismic and volcanic monitoring of the English-speaking Eastern Caribbean. She led the volcanological management of the 2021 La Soufriere eruptions on Saint Vincent, for which the Seismic Research Centre received global accolades.
Go to Profile#1995
Vartika Mathur
#164328
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Dr Vartika Mathur is an Indian scientist who is a Professor in the Department of Zoology, Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi. She was the only Indian to receive the NFP fellowship in 2008 from Nuffic in partnership with Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which enabled her to pursue PhD at Wageningen University and Research Centre. She finally received her PhD in 2012 for her studies on plant-animal-microbe interactions. Her research led to the characterization of temporal dynamics of different insect-induced plant responses.
Go to Profile#1996
Ann Rockley
#102407
Overall Influence
Ann Rockley is a content manager. She is the founder and President of The Rockley Group, based in the greater Toronto Area. She regularly presents papers and workshops on subjects involving the efficient creation, management and delivery of content for organizations in North America and Europe. She was the lead analyst for The XML & Component Content Management Report on Content Management Systems Watch.
Go to Profile#1997
Frances V. Harbour
#116807
Overall Influence
1953 - 2013 (60 years)
Frances Vryling Harbour was an associate professor of government at George Mason University, in the United States. She died on December 19, 2013. Information She is a founding member and past president of the International Ethics Section of the International Studies Association and a former John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur fellow in international peace and security studies. She has written on the ethics of weapons of mass destruction and just war philosophy. Her book Thinking About International Ethics: Moral Theory and Cases from American Foreign Policy looks at the Realism-Idealism debat...
Go to Profile#1998
Gina Osterloh
#188203
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Gina Osterloh is a Filipino American conceptual artist who uses photography to question and investigate notions of self and identity. Best known for photographs that feature partly concealed bodies in "meticulously crafted room-sized sets," Osterloh challenges conventions of portraiture and often combines elements of performance, tableau, sculpture, installation, and drawing into photographs.
Go to Profile#1999
Lydia Yu-Jose
#58640
Overall Influence
1944 - 2014 (70 years)
Lydia N. Yu-Jose was a professor of political science and Japanese Studies at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. A graduate of Sophia University, she was best known for her research into the history of Japan–Philippines relations, as well as aiding in the development of Japanese studies in the Philippines as a separate academic discipline.
Go to Profile#2000
Kathryn Starkey
#191966
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Kathryn Starkey is Professor of German Studies and, By Courtesy, English, History, and Comparative Literature, at Stanford University. She is author of several books and articles on medieval German philology and visual culture.
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