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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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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,

#2051

Laurel McSherry

#100556

Overall Influence

Laurel McSherry is an artist and Director of the Graduate Landscape Architecture Program at the Morgan State University School of Architecture and Planning in Baltimore. Previously, she was the graduate landscape architecture program director at Virginia Tech's Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center. Her design research work is award-winning and frequently focuses on rivers and their drainage basins.

#2052

Betty Tompkins

#185222

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Betty Tompkins is an American artist and arts educator. Her paintings revolve, almost exclusively, around photorealistic, close-up imagery of both heterosexual and homosexual intimate acts. She creates large-scale, monochromatic canvases and works on paper of singular or multiple figures engaged in sexual acts, executed with successive layers of spray painting over pre-drawings formed by text.

#2053

Wadad Kadi

#84506

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Wadad Afifi Kadi is a Lebanese scholar of Arabic and Islamic civilizations and the Avalon Foundation Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of Islamic Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

#2054

Isa Milman

#182147

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Isa Milman is a German-born Canadian writer and visual artist living in British Columbia. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Milman came to Boston with her parents and studied at Tufts University. She came to Canada in 1975. She received a master's degree in rehabilitation science from McGill University and taught occupational therapy there. She later moved to Victoria, where she worked at the Epilepsy and Parkinson's Centre.

#2055

Cecily Hennessy

#188330

Overall Influence

Cecily Jane Hennessy, FSA, is the Academic Director of Christie's Education, London. She has promoted studies on the imagery of children and is an authority on the representation of children, adolescents and the family in Byzantium.

#2056

Amel Grami

#108960

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Amel Grami is a Tunisian academic, writer, and women's rights activist. Grami has worked as a professor of Islamic studies at Manouba University. She has advocated for Islamic modernism and Islamic feminism, and she argues that the Quran opposes heavy legal restrictions on women. She has been the subject of protest for her teachings on Islam and feminism, including an on-campus sermon in November 2011 that condemned her presence at the university.

#2057

Louisa Chase

#139553

Overall Influence

1951 - 2016 (65 years)

Louisa Lizbeth Chase was an American neo-expressionist painter and printmaker. Life Chase was born in 1951 in Panama City, Panama. She grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She earned her BFA in printmaking from Syracuse University in 1973 and her MFA in fine art from Yale University School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1975. In the year of her graduation she had her first New York exhibition, at the alternative gallery Artists Space.

#2058

Theresa Cameron

#171839

Overall Influence

1954 - 2012 (58 years)

Theresa Ann Cameron was the first African-American woman to be awarded tenure in the College of Design at Arizona State University, in 2000. Background After spending her entire childhood in foster care, Cameron put herself through college, with a full scholarship to Boston College and then a transfer to the State University of New York, Buffalo. She eventually obtained her Doctorate in Design from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1991. Her difficult childhood experiences are chronicled in her book Foster Care Odyssey in America: A Black Girl's Story published in 2002, and detailed by Chr...

#2059

Christine Lang

#47562

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Christine Lang is a German microbiologist and entrepreneur. Life and work Lang was raised in Bochum, West Germany, with her brother Joachim Lang. She studied biology from 1976 to 1981 at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the University of Sussex. In 1985, she obtained a Dr. rer. nat. in Biology in Bochum on the molecular genetics of fungi, with her thesis entitled "Extrachromosomal in vitro genetics in fungi: chondriome vectors in yeasts." She then worked in industrial research at the Hüls Chemie research center . In 1993 she moved to the Technical University of Berlin and habilitated in the field of microbiology and molecular genetics under the supervision of Ulf Stahl.

#2060

Barbara Tisserat

#181442

Overall Influence

1951 - 2017 (66 years)

Barbara Tisserat was an American artist and lithographer born in Denver, Colorado. She taught lithography at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts. She was a member of One/Off Printmakers and also taught at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Robinson House lithography workshop with Marilyn Bevilacqua. She was active with the Richmond Printmaking Workshop and served on the Advisory Board of Studio Two-Three in Richmond, Virginia. She was a member of the Summer 2007 graphics faculty at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and was a visiting artist and lecturer in the Lyceum program ...

#2061

Sadeka Halim

#93088

Overall Influence

Sadeka Halim is an academic. She is current vice-chancellor of Jagannath University, appointed by the President of Bangladesh since November 2023. She was a professor of the Dhaka University and the first female dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the university. She is the first female to be the Information Commissioner of Bangladesh.

#2062

Constance A Owens

#192208

Overall Influence

#2063

Jill Gibbon

#45011

Overall Influence

Jill Gibbon is a British artist, best known for sketching people in the arms trade while working undercover at arms fairs. She is a senior lecturer in graphic arts at Leeds Beckett University. Gibbon earned a bachelor's degree from Leeds Polytechnic , a master's from Keele University, and a PhD from Wimbledon School of Art.

#2064

Citlalli Gaona-Tiburcio

#190534

Overall Influence

Citlalli Gaona-Tiburcio is a Mexican materials scientist whose research interests include the treatment of metal-reinforced concrete for resistance to corrosion, and the development of composite materials for extreme environments including high-temperature and aerospace applications. She is a professor and researcher in the Center for Research and Innovation in Aeronautical Engineering, in the Faculty of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering of the Autonomous University of Nuevo León .

#2065

Hou Jingjing

#168556

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Hou Jingjing was the first Chinese woman in a wheelchair to earn a doctorate. She is currently employed at Nanjing Normal University. Life and career Jingjing was born in 1975 in the Dangtu County of the Anhui Province. She was reportedly gifted from a young age. At 11 years old, she was diagnosed as paralyzed from the waist down and had to drop out of school. After dropping out, Jingjing was home-schooled. She required frequent treatment, which often resulted in her missing classes and having to catch up on her own.

#2066

Svitlana Oleksiivna Shvachko

Svitlana Oleksiivna Shvachko

#75025

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Professor Svitlana Oleksiivna Shvachko is an academician of the Academy of Higher school of Ukraine and a Professor of the Department of Germanic Philology in Sumy State University. Life Professor Shvachko was born on 25 November 1935 in Kiev, in the family of a serviceman. Graduated from Horlivka State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages in 1956 and worked as a teacher of English at schools in Horlivka , and as a lecturer of English an associate professor of the Department of English Philology at Horlivka Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages .

#2067

Pelagia Gesiou-Faltsi

#179910

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Pelayia Yessiou-Faltsi is a leading scholar in the field of civil procedure in Greece. She is emeritus professor at the Law Faculty of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has been teaching there for more than forty-five years and served as the Faculty’s Dean from 1994–1997. She teaches at the Greek National School of Judiciary and has been a visiting professor at Tulane University.

#2068

Marlene Norst

#98893

Overall Influence

1930 - 2010 (80 years)

Marlene Johanna Norst was an Australian linguist, pedagogue and philanthropist of Austrian heritage. Her main areas of work were German language and literature studies, language pedagogy, English as a second language, socio-linguistics and children’s literature.

#2069

Mabel Deutrich

#182435

Overall Influence

1915 - 1998 (83 years)

Mabel Evelyn Deutrich was an American Archivist. In 1975 she was the highest ranking woman in the history of the National Archives. She had a 29-year career as a government archivist and served as Assistant Archivist for the Office of the National Archive from 1975 to 1979. She was a specialist on the American Revolutionary War, who inventoried War Department collections of Revolutionary War records. She was particularly active in assessing the role and status of men and women archivists. She received the 1976 NARS Meritorious Service Award for “advancing the status of women in the archiva...

#2070

Ursula Neugebauer

#99599

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Ursula Neugebauer is a German artist. Biography Ursula Neugebauer studied visual art at the Academy of Fine Arts Münster, where she was named a master student by Timm Ulrichs, as well as literature at the University of Münster. She taught high school for a while and subsequently worked as an art therapist at the Universitätklinikum Münster. From 1999 to 2002 she lectured in the Department of Architecture at the Technische Universität Berlin. She has been professor of visual art at the Berlin University of the Arts. since 2003.

#2071

Glenda Green

#118430

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Glenda Allen Green is an American artist, academic and author. She has accomplishments in art, art history, science, philosophy, spirituality, and philosophy. Life Born in 1945, Glenda is a native of Weatherford, Texas. She married art historian and critic Victor Koshkin-Youritzin on August 30, 1970 and together they moved to Norman, Oklahoma in 1972. She was remarried to Brian Bibb in 1980.

#2072

Jacqueline Fahey

Jacqueline Fahey

#146549

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Jacqueline Mary Fahey is a New Zealand painter and writer. Biography Of Irish Catholic ancestry, Fahey was born in Timaru in 1929. Fahey had strong female role models in her life: her mother was a pianist who attended the Melbourne Conservatoire of Music and worked as a professional pianist for 8 years before returning to New Zealand, and her grandmother taught at a Dominican Convent and was "very good at languages and loved history". "These two women were my role models, really," Fahey has commented. "They gave me the idea that women were supposed to excel even if it was primarily in the ar...

#2073

Violeta Moreno Megías

#192266

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (36 years)

#2074

Farkhonda Hassan

#41072

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

Farkhonda Hassan was a professor of Geology at the American University in Cairo and was chair of the Commission on Human Development and Local Administration of the Shura Council. Education Hassan had a BSc in Chemistry and Geology from Cairo University, an MSc in Solid State Science from the American University in Cairo, and a PhD in Geology from the University of Pittsburgh . She also held a Diploma in Psychology and Education from Ain Shams University in Egypt.

#2075

Terri Young

#62714

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Terri L. Young is an American pediatric ophthalmologist. Early life and education Young was born in Sacramento, California and is African-American. She attended Bowdoin College for her undergraduate education and graduated with bachelor's degrees in biochemistry and sociology in 1981. She then attended Harvard Medical School and graduated in 1986. She remained in Boston for her pediatrics residency, working at Boston Children's Hospital, then moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago for her ophthalmology residency. Young then trained in pediatric ophthalmology at the Children's Hospital...

#2076

Annabeth Rosen

#94471

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Annabeth Rosen is an American sculptor best known for abstract ceramic works, as well as drawings. She is considered part of a second generation of Bay Area ceramic artists after the California Clay Movement, who have challenged ceramic traditions involving expression, form and function and helped spur the medium's acceptance in mainstream contemporary sculpture. Rosen's sculptures range from monumental to tabletop-sized, and emerge out of an accumulative bricolage process combining dozens or hundreds of fabricated parts and clay fragments and discards. Reviewers characterize her art as delib...

#2077

Elena Gillespie

#192288

Overall Influence

#2078

Christine Reta Arkinstall

#189967

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Christine Reta Arkinstall is a New Zealand academic. She is currently professor of European languages and literature at the University of Auckland. Career After a BA from University of Auckland, Arkinstall obtained a Masters from University of Oviedo in Spain, before returning to Auckland for a PhD entitled 'El sujeto en el exilio: un estudio de la obra poética de Francisco Brines, José Angel Valente y José Manuel Caballero Bonald.' She joined the staff, researching nationhood and gender ideas in Spanish-speaking literatures. Rising to full professor in 2010.

#2079

Wendy Coburn

#105013

Overall Influence

1963 - 2015 (52 years)

Wendy Coburn was a Canadian artist and professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. She is known for her sculptures and for her video-based show "Anatomy of a Protest" . Education Coburn studied at Dundas Valley School of Art and received an associate degree from the Ontario College of Art in 1985. In 1997, she completed her MFA at Concordia University.

#2080

Virginia MacKenny

#138656

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Virginia MacKenny is a South African artist and writer. She is currently an Associate Professor of Painting at Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in Cape Town, South Africa.

#2081

Sarah F Clatterbuck Soper

#192301

Overall Influence

#2082

Beth Lo

#78248

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Beth Lo in Lafayette, Indiana is an American artist, ceramist and educator. Her parents emigrated from China. Lo received a Bachelor of General Studies from the University of Michigan in 1971, and then studied ceramics with Rudy Autio at the University of Montana, receiving her MFA in 1974. She assumed his job as professor of ceramics there when he retired in 1985, and was awarded the University of Montana Provost’s Distinguished Lecturer Award in 2006 and 2010.

#2083

Heather Ahtone

#176998

Overall Influence

heather ahtone, PhD , is director of Curatorial Affairs at the First Americans Museum. Background and education Heather Ahtone is enrolled in the Chickasaw Nation and a descendant of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She received an associate's degree from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 1993 and her master's degree and doctoral degree from the University of Oklahoma .

#2084

Penny Siopis

#91328

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Penny Siopis is a South African artist from Cape Town. She was born in Vryburg in the North West province from Greek parents who had moved after inheriting a bakery from Siopis maternal grandfather. Siopis studied Fine Arts at Rhodes University in Makhanda, completing her master's degree in 1976, after which she pursued postgraduate studies at Portsmouth Polytechnic in the United Kingdom. She taught Fine Arts at the Technikon Natal in Durban from 1980 to 1983. In 1984 she took up a lectureship at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. During this time she was also visiting resea...

#2085

Dana Shugar

#158990

Overall Influence

1961 - 2000 (39 years)

Dana Renee Shugar was an associate professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island, while also contributing to issues in feminism during her lifetime. She died of cancer in January 2000 at age 38. Shugar received her bachelor's degree in biology and English in 1983 from Augustana College and then her master's degree in 1988 and her Ph.D. in English in 1991 from the University of Iowa. At the University of Rhode Island, Shugar became the first department head of the women's studies major.

#2086

Fran Reed

#142977

Overall Influence

1943 - 2008 (65 years)

Frances Ann Reed was an American fiber artist and teacher based in Alaska who specialized in a distinctive style of basketry made from dried fish skins and other natural materials found in the state.

#2087

Madhavi Sardesai

Madhavi Sardesai

#82604

Overall Influence

1962 - 2014 (52 years)

Madhavi Sardesai was an Indian academic and the editor of the Konkani literary journal "Jaag". She was also a scholar, publisher and writer who worked mainly in the Konkani language in Goa. She headed the Goa University's Konkani Department. She died on 22 December 2014 after a battle with cancer.

#2088

Emma Smith

#125318

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Hertford College. She has published and lectured widely on William Shakespeare and on other early modern dramatists, and worked with numerous theatre companies. Her lectures are available as podcasts Not Shakespeare: Elizabethan and Jacobean Popular Theatre and Approaching Shakespeare.

#2089

Margaret Wileman

#114441

Overall Influence

1908 - 2014 (106 years)

Margaret Annie Wileman was a British academic administrator, lecturer in education, and teacher. From 1953 to 1973, she was Principal of Hughes Hall, Cambridge, and a lecturer in education at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. She had previously taught at The Abbey School, Reading, and at Queen's College, London; two all-girls private schools. She had also lectured at St Katherine's College, Warrington, and at Bedford College, University of London

#2090

Judy Bolch

#95904

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Dorothy Judith Bolch is an American journalist and the first Houston Harte Chair in Journalism at the University of Missouri. Bolch has won awards for her writing and editing at The Raleigh Times and The News & Observer, both based in Raleigh, NC. She was managing editor/enterprise at The News & Observer in 1997, when she joined the faculty of the University of Missouri and became the first Houston Harte Chair. Until her retirement in September 2008, Bolch was Teaching Editor at the Columbia Missourian, which is staffed by Missouri School of Journalism students who work under the direction of...

#2091

Megan Crowhurst

#87414

Overall Influence

Megan Jane Crowhurst is an Australian- and Canadian-raised linguist and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin in the United States. Career Crowhurst earned her BA in linguistics at the University of British Columbia and the MA and PhD at the University of Arizona . She has held academic positions at Yale University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and, since 1999, in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin.

#2092

Emily Wick

#106821

Overall Influence

1921 - 2013 (92 years)

Emily Lippincott Wick was the first woman to reach the rank of tenured faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . She taught in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science. Wick received her Ph.D. in chemistry from MIT in 1951 and became a tenured professor in 1963. She advocated on behalf of female students at MIT and was influential in getting coeducational residencies, so that with more living options more female applicants could be accepted.

#2093

Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel

#143726

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel is a German professor of English, literary critic, Shakespeare scholar and writer who claims to have found conclusive answers to many of the unresolved problems of Shakespeare's life and literary career using trans-disciplinary research methods. Among the answers she claims to have found are Shakespeare's religion, the identity of the 'Dark Lady' of his sonnets, and the authentic portraits.

#2094

Ligia Maura Costa

#78458

Overall Influence

Ligia Maura Costa is a full professor at Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo – Fundação Getulio Vargas . She received her habilitation degree in international law from Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo . She holds a PhD and a LL.M both in international trade law from the Université of Paris-X and a bachelor's degree in Law from FDUSP. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan Law School and was a postdoctoral fellow at Sciences Po, Paris. She is author of several books and articles published in Brazil and abroad, having worked at the WTO in the Legal Affairs Division.

#2095

Evelyn Davidson White

#192354

Overall Influence

1921 - 2007 (86 years)

Evelyn Amanda Davidson White was an American author, vocal teacher and Howard University Choral Director. White was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, to Rev. William H. Davidson, a Baptist minister, and Florence Gidney Davidson. She was influential in the training of many students who went on to make their marks in the music world, including Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway, Jesse Norman, Samuel Bonds, and Richard Smallwood.

#2096

Maleka Begum

#54616

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Maleka Begum is a Bangladeshi feminist, author, academic. Biography Begum was born in 1944 to Abdul Aziz and Fahima Begum. Begum completed her secondary education from Sher-E-Bangla Girls' High School. She earned her B.A. and M.A. from University of Dhaka in Bengali literature and Sociology in 1965 and 1966 and in 1968 .

#2097

Leah Gilliam

#191322

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

L. Franklin Gilliam is an American filmmaker and media artist. Her work explores issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Gilliam was the director of projects and community catalyst at gamelab's Institute of Play and a visiting faculty member at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. They are currently vice president of strategy and innovation at Girls Who Code.

#2098

Helen Ramsaran

#176559

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Helen Evans Ramsaran is an American sculptor. Her work explores the primordial world of ancient rituals, mysterious fossilized remains, mystic forces, and African inspired architecture. Ramsaran's work was first inspired by a trip to Africa in 1981, and although her sculpture is inanimate, there is a lurking sense of humanity's presence. Her recent work explores the effects of climate change on life sustaining systems and resources, specifically marine ecosystems and plant and animal species.

#2099

Astrid Grouls

#192363

Overall Influence

#2100

Ágústa Guðmundsdóttir

Ágústa Guðmundsdóttir

#163680

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Ágústa Guðmundsdóttir is a professor emerita in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Iceland, and was a co-founder of the biotechnology company Zymetech, where she also works in research & development.

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