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 Engineering,
#551
Laura Waller
#90359
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Laura Ann Waller is a computer scientist and Ted Van Duzer Endowed Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She was awarded a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Fellowship to develop microscopes to image deep structures within the brain in 2017 and won the 2018 SPIE Early Career Award.
Go to Profile#552
Freda Stevenson
#126836
Overall Influence
Freda Kathryn Stevenson is a British immunologist and Professor at the University of Southampton. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2000, and was the first British researcher to be awarded the American Society of Hematology Henry M. Stratton Medal.
Go to Profile#553
Sabine Szunerits
#137674
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
#554
Audrey Ellerbee Bowden
#69701
Overall Influence
Audrey K. Ellerbee Bowden is an American engineer and Dorothy J. Wingfield Phillips Chancellor's Faculty Fellow at Vanderbilt University, as well as an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. She is a Fellow of Optica, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the International Society for Optics and Photonics .
Go to Profile#555
Dominique Gauzin-Müller
#101785
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Dominique Gauzin-Müller is a French architect and architectural critic, focusing on wood and sustainability in architecture and urbanism. She is the author of several books on these subjects, which have been translated into several languages. She wrote Construire avec le Bois , L'architecture écologique , 25 maisons en bois and 25 maisons écologique .
Go to Profile#556
Elizabeth Hillman
#75206
Overall Influence
Elizabeth M. C. Hillman is a British-born academic who is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology at Columbia University. She was awarded the 2011 Adolph Lomb Medal from The Optical Society and the 2018 SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award.
Go to Profile#557
Frances M. Ross
#132083
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Frances Mary Ross is the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her work involves the use of in situ transmission electron microscopy to study nanostructure formation. In 2018 she was awarded the International Federation of Societies for Microscopy Hatsujiro Hashimoto Medal. Ross is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, the Microscopy Society of America and the Royal Microscopical Society,
Go to Profile#558
Anne Burns
#68644
Overall Influence
1915 - 2001 (86 years)
Anne Burns was a British aeronautical engineer and glider pilot. She had a career of nearly 40 years in the Royal Aircraft Establishment as an engineer and an expert in wind shear. As a glider pilot, she holds the British record for highest altitude, and was the first woman to cross the English Channel in a glider.
Go to Profile#559
Ann Karagozian
#109542
Overall Influence
Ann Renee Karagozian is an aerospace engineer known for her work on combustion, fluid dynamics, advanced propulsion techniques, and transverse jets in supersonic flows. She is a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles , where she is also the former interim vice chancellor for research, the director of the Collaborative Center for Aerospace Studies, the director of the Promise Armenian Institute, a trustee of the Institute for Defense Analyses, and a trustee of the American University of Armenia.
Go to Profile#560
Deborah J. Bowen
#138615
Overall Influence
#561
Yongjie Jessica Zhang
#130370
Overall Influence
Yongjie Jessica Zhang is an American mechanical engineer. She is the George Tallman Ladd and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor of mechanical engineering and, by courtesy, of biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Engineering with Computers.
Go to Profile#562
Isobel Pollock-Hulf
#132685
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Isobel Anne Pollock-Hulf is visiting professor in Engineering and Design at the University of Leeds. Early life Pollock is the daughter of Wilson and Margaret Pollock, she was educated at Dalriada School, Ballymoney, Northern Ireland and then attended Imperial College in London graduating in 1976. Subsequently, she became a Chartered Engineer in 1981.
Go to Profile#563
Margaret O'Mahony
#79758
Overall Influence
Margaret O'Mahony is an Irish civil engineer. She is the Professor of Civil Engineering at Trinity College Dublin. O'Mahony completed a bachelor of engineering in civil engineering at NUI Galway and a doctorate from the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#564
Anette Hosoi
#59433
Overall Influence
Anette E. "Peko" Hosoi is an American mechanical engineer, biophysicist, and mathematician, currently the Neil and Jane Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering and associate dean of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#565
Hannah Joyce
#102002
Overall Influence
Hannah J. Joyce is an Australian scientist and engineer, and a professor at the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Her research specialises in the development of new nanomaterials for applications in optoelectronics and energy harvesting. She has received several awards for her work in nanowire engineering and terahertz photonics.
Go to Profile#566
Arti Agrawal
#115383
Overall Influence
Arti Agrawal is a scientist and engineer known for her work on computational photonics as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM; she has been recognized in both of these areas by a number of awards. Her research is focused on numerical modeling and simulation of photonic devices and optical components. Agrawal is currently serving as Associate Professor and the Director of Women in Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Technology Sydney and Associate Vice President of Diversity for the IEEE Photonics Society.
Go to Profile#567
Ipsita Roy
#124059
Overall Influence
Ipsita Roy is a British-Indian materials scientist who is a professor at the University of Sheffield. Her research considers natural polymers of bacterial origin for medical applications. She was elected to the New York Academy of Sciences in 1997 and serves as the Editor of the Journal of Chemical Technology & Biotechnology.
Go to Profile#568
Nadia Lapusta
#116557
Overall Influence
Nadia Lapusta is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Geophysics at the California Institute of Technology. She designed the first computational model that could accurately and efficiently simulate sequence of earthquakes and interseismic slow deformation on a planar fault in a single consistent physical framework.
Go to Profile#569
Teresa Head-Gordon
#119224
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Teresa Lyn Head-Gordon is an American chemist and the Chancellor's Professor of Chemistry, Bioengineering, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also a faculty scientist in the Chemical Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a fellow of both the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Chemical Society .
Go to Profile#570
Usha Chakravarthy
#140179
Overall Influence
#571
Ingrid Moerman
#140209
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
#572
Catherine M. Klapperich
#133718
Overall Influence
Catherine M. Klapperich is an American biomedical engineer noted for her research on diagnostics and precision medicine. She is currently professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, with additional appointments in materials science & engineering and mechanical engineering. Klapperich serves as the director of research for the DAMP Laboratory at BU. Klapperich was previously the director of the NIH NIBIB Center for Future Technologies in Cancer Care as part of the Point-of Care-Research Technologies Network.
Go to Profile#573
Eva Koppel
#96053
Overall Influence
1916 - 2006 (90 years)
Eva Koppel née Ditlevsen was a Danish architect who together with her husband Nils ran one of Denmark's largest architectural firms . Biography The daughter of a bank director, Eva Koppel was educated at the Danish Academy in Copenhagen . She married the architect Nils Koppel in 1936 and together they worked in Alvar Aalto's studio in Finland and later joined him in Stockholm 1943–19451946] which is listed.
Go to Profile#574
Zelda Zabinsky
#118531
Overall Influence
Zelda Barbara Zabinsky is an industrial engineer and operations researcher specializing in the application of global optimization to logistics. She is a professor of industrial engineering at the University of Washington, where she also holds adjunct positions in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and civil and environmental engineering.
Go to Profile#575
Valerie Masson-Delmotte
#60770
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Valerie Masson-Delmotte is a French climate scientist and Research Director at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, where she works in the Climate and Environment Sciences Laboratory . She uses data from past climates to test models of climate change, and has contributed to several IPCC reports.
Go to Profile#576
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham
#84198
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham is an American bioengineer and neuroscientist. She is the founding Director of the Carnegie Mellon University Neuroscience Institute, the George A. and Helen Dunham Cowan Professor of Auditory Neuroscience, and Professor of Psychology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering.
Go to Profile#577
Xiaodong Zou
#99234
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Xiaodong Zou is a Chinese-Swedish chemist who is a professor at Stockholm University. Her research considers the development of electron diffraction for the three dimensional characterisation of materials. She is a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. She was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.
Go to Profile#578
Lydia Bourouiba
#113480
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Lydia Bourouiba is an Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Professor, an Associate Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering departments, and in the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also a Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Faculty, and Affiliate Faculty of Harvard Medical School. She directs the Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory at MIT.
Go to Profile#579
Arti Hurria
#141396
Overall Influence
#580
Jennifer Van Eyk
#136992
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Jennifer Eileen Van Eyk is the Erika Glazer Chair in Women's Heart Health, the Director of Advanced Clinical Biosystems Institute in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, the Director of Basic Science Research in the Women's Heart Center, a Professor in Medicine and in Biomedical Sciences at Cedars-Sinai. She is a renowned scientist in the field of clinical proteomics.
Go to Profile#581
Abir Al-Tabbaa
#140650
Overall Influence
Abir Al-Tabbaa CEng FICE is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Cambridge. She works on intelligent materials for infrastructure. She is the Director of the Future Infrastructure and Built Environment Doctoral Training Centre.
Go to Profile#582
Ashlie Martini
#138881
Overall Influence
Ashlie Martini is a tribologist and professor of mechanical engineering at University of California, Merced. Biography Education Martini received her Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering in 1998 from Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois. She later completed her Doctor of Philosophy in the same field, at the same school, in 2007.
Go to Profile#583
Athina Markopoulou
#83308
Overall Influence
Athina Markopoulou is a Greek-American engineer who is Professor, Chancellor's Fellow, and chair at the University of California, Irvine. Her research considers internet privacy, data transparency and mobile data analytics. She was elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2020.
Go to Profile#584
Viviana Gradinaru
#77419
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (43 years)
Viviana Grădinaru is a Romanian-American neuroscientist who is a Professor of Neuroscience and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. She develops neurotechnologies including optogenetics CLARITY tissue clearing, and gene delivery vectors. She has been awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award. In 2019 she was a finalist for the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. In 2020 she was awarded a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science by the Vilcek Foundation.
Go to Profile#585
Leslie Weston
#33051
Overall Influence
Leslie A. Weston FAA, is a plant biologist, who was awarded a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2023, for her work on weed suppressing ground covers and pest management. She is a professor at Charles Sturt University, at Wagga Wagga, and researches botany, agronomy, weed control and horticulture.
Go to Profile#586
AnnMarie Thomas
#86298
Overall Influence
AnnMarie Thomas is a mechanical engineer, author, blogger, and advocate for early engineering education. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Ocean Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and went on to attain both an M.S. and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology. Additionally, she has her certification in Sustainable Design from Minneapolis College of Art and Design . She is currently associate professor in the School of Engineering, the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship, and the Opus College of Business at the University of St.
Go to Profile#587
Samira Kiani
#86580
Overall Influence
Samira Kiani is an Associate Professor in the department of Pathology of University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Pittsburgh Liver Research Center. Formerly, she was a Health Systems Engineer at Arizona State University. Her work combines Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat with synthetic biology. She is a 2019 AAAS Leshner Fellow.
Go to Profile#588
Elizabeth Chang
#142386
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Elizabeth Chang is an electrical engineer at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. Chang was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for her contributions to industrial informatics and cyber physical systems.
Go to Profile#589
Simin Davoudi
#100896
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Simin Davoudi FAcSS is Professor of Environmental Policy and Planning at Newcastle University. She is Past President of the Association of European Schools of Planning and, as coordinator of the Planning Research Network, advised the Department of Communities and Local Government on its research priorities until 2007. Currently, she is a member of the DCLG Expert Panel on Housing market and Planning, and is expert advisor for the DG Environment of European Commission for Urban Environment.
Go to Profile#590
Marianne Elliott
#36688
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Marianne Phoebe Elliott is a British theatre director and producer who works on the West End and Broadway. She has received numerous accolades including three Laurence Olivier Awards and four Tony Awards.
Go to Profile#591
Kathryn H. Anthony
#76902
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Kathryn H. Anthony is an American professor of architecture, author and spokesperson specializing in gender issues in architecture. She is a Distinguished Professor from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture lifetime laureate. Her research has earned national awards from the American Institute of Architects and the Environmental Design Research Association.
Go to Profile#592
Ola Uduku
#73017
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Ola Uduku is a British African architect who is Head of School at the Liverpool School of Architecture. Uduku is a member of the Nigerian Institute of Architects and the Royal Institute of British Architects. She specialises in African educational architecture.
Go to Profile#593
Lizy John
#120901
Overall Influence
Lizy Kurian John is an Indian American electrical engineer, who is currently the Cullen Trust for Higher Education Endowed Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her Ph.D. in computer engineering from The Pennsylvania State University in 1993. She joined The University of Texas Austin faculty in 1996. Her research is in the areas of computer architecture, multicore processors, memory systems, performance evaluation and benchmarking, workload characterization, and reconfigurable computing.
Go to Profile#594
Elizabeth Bauer Mock
#91182
Overall Influence
1911 - 1998 (87 years)
Elizabeth Mock was director of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art and a university professor. She was a charter apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, and the first former Taliesin fellow to join the MoMA staff. She was an influential advocate for modern architecture in the United States.
Go to Profile#595
Penina Axelrad
#110489
Overall Influence
Penina Axelrad is an American aerospace engineer known for her research on satellite orbital dynamics and the Global Positioning System. She is Joseph T. Negler Professor in the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research and the Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences department at the University of Colorado.
Go to Profile#596
Iris Chi
#143457
Overall Influence
#597
Huili Grace Xing
#94275
Overall Influence
Huili Grace Xing is the William L. Quackenbush Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering in the Cornell University College of Engineering. In 2019, Xing was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society "for pioneering contributions in polar wide-bandgap semiconductors, 2D crystal semiconductors and layered crystals," as well as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2021.
Go to Profile#598
Jian Cao
#143449
Overall Influence
Jian Cao is a materials scientist and mechanical engineer whose research includes the mechanical behavior and manufacturing of sheet metal and woven composite materials, including dieless deformation and laser additive manufacturing processes. She is Cardiss Collins Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University and director of the Northwestern Initiative for Manufacturing Science and Innovation.
Go to Profile#599
Orla Feely
#70302
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Orla Feely is an Irish academic and professor of electronic engineering. She is currently President of University College Dublin , having previously served as Vice-President for Research, Innovation and Impact. She is also the first Irish woman elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Go to Profile#600
Anja Boisen
#143685
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
