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,
#951
Rebecca Lingwood
#169033
Overall Influence
Rebecca Julie Lingwood is the Provost and Professor of Fluid Dynamics at Brunel University London. She holds an affiliate position at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Lingwood was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2019.
Go to Profile#952
Sally Aitken
#107861
Overall Influence
Sally Nora Aitken is a Professor and Associate Dean of Research and Innovation at the University of British Columbia. In 2017, Aitken was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Career After earning her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, Aitken joining the faculty at Oregon State University. She was then offered a position at the University of British Columbia as a NSERC Industrial Research Chair. In 2001, Aitken helped start the Centre for Forest Conservation Genetics at UBC alongside Tongli Wang.
Go to Profile#953
Lucyna Nyka
#170545
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Lucyna Nyka is a Polish architect, full professor at Gdańsk University of Technology. Dean of the Faculty of Architecture , head of Department of Marine and Industrial Architecture, in 2008-2016 a vice-dean for Research
Go to Profile#954
Abena Joan Brown
#145082
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Abena Joan Brown was an African-American businesswoman and theater producer who founded the Creative Arts Foundation in Chicago to enable black artists to work. Known as the "mother of Chicago's black arts community", she received honors and awards for her work in both theater and social programs. Brown was inducted into the Chicago Women's Hall of Fame and interviewed as a subject of the archival program The HistoryMakers.
Go to Profile#955
María Inés Valla
#175776
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
María Inés Valla is an Argentine electronic and power engineer specializing in power electronics and nonlinear control for electric power systems. She is a professor of electrical engineering at the National University of La Plata, affiliated with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council Institute for Research in Electronics, Control and Signal Processing .
Go to Profile#956
Pao Houa Her
#104667
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Pao Houa Her is a Hmong-American photographer whose works are primarily centered around the history and lived experiences of the Hmong people. Her's photography consists of greenery and geographic images. She is also a professor at the University of Minnesota and teaches Introduction to Photography.
Go to Profile#957
Laura Fabris
#86606
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Laura Fabris is a professor at Polytechnic University of Turin, formerly associate professor for materials science and engineering at Rutgers University, New Jersey, United States. Life Fabris studied chemistry at the University of Padua and finished her master's studies with her master's thesis "Artificial Photosynthetic Reaction Centers: Paramagnetic Intermediates Detected by EPR Spectroscopy" in 2001. She then received her doctoral degree in chemical sciences in April 2006 from the same university. The title of her dissertation was "Peptide Monolayers on Gold Nanoparticles and Surfaces". From 2006 to 2009, she was then a postdoc at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Go to Profile#958
Karen Rafferty
#168424
Overall Influence
Karen Rafferty is the Head of the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Queen's University Belfast. She works with virtual and augmented reality for health care and automation.
Go to Profile#959
Zoka Zola
#172675
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Zoka Zola is a Croatian architect and teacher who operates her own studio in Chicago, Illinois. She has license to work as an architect in the US, the UK, and Croatia. Her most notable work is the Pfanner House for which she received the Home of the Year Award named as the best house in North America by Architecture Magazine. Kenneth Frampton's publication the American Masterworks: Houses of the 20th and 21st Centuries lists this house among the 43 houses constructed in the USA since 1985. She is also a professor at the School of Architecture at University of Illinois, Chicago. Her firm is als...
Go to Profile#960
Nina Tandon
#170481
Overall Influence
Nina Marie Tandon is an American biomedical engineer. She is the CEO and co-founder of EpiBone. She currently serves as an adjunct professor of Electrical Engineering at Cooper Union and is a senior fellow at the Lab for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering at Columbia. She was a 2011 TED Fellow and a 2012 senior TED Fellow.
Go to Profile#961
Mi Lu
#130925
Overall Influence
Mi Lu is an engineer and professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She is noted for her contributions in computer arithmetic, parallel algorithms, computer architectures, and computer networks. She has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Texas A&M University since 1987. She is the author of the book Arithmetic and Logic in Computer Systems and book chapters in Handbook of Bioinspired Algorithms and Applications and Biocomputing.
Go to Profile#962
Anne Ferran
#110182
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Anne Ferran is an Australian photographer. Background Anne Ferran was born on 10 May 1949 in Sydney, New South Wales. Ferran began exhibiting her photographic work in the early 1980s. In 1986 she relocated to Europe after being awarded a Visual Arts Board travel grant from an Australian committee. She then took up a six-month residency at the Power Studio at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. Ferran returned from overseas to Sydney to complete her Masters of Fine Arts, but then shifted to Melbourne in 1995 only a year after graduating. In 2003 she received a residency in London from the Australian Council.
Go to Profile#963
Linda Day Clark
#118275
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Linda Day Clark is a photographer, professor, and curator noted for capturing everyday life in African American rural and urban environments, particularly in Gee's Bend. Her work has been shown in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Lehman College, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum.
Go to Profile#964
Belle Wei
#138773
Overall Influence
Belle W. Y. Wei is an American electrical engineer and educator. she is Carolyn Guidry Chair in Engineering Education and Innovative Learning at San José State University. Her other positions include Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering’s Don Beall Dean of Engineering at San José State University and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at California State University, Chico.
Go to Profile#965
Karen Christman
#177206
Overall Influence
Karen Leigh Christman is an American bioengineer who is the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and the Pierre Galletti Endowed Chair for Bioengineering Innovation at University of California, San Diego. Her research considers regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. She was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2023.
Go to Profile#966
Patricia Saldaña Natke
#170542
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Patricia Saldaña Natke is an American architect, the founding partner and president of UrbanWorks, Ltd., a Chicago-based architecture, interiors, and urban planning firm. Biography Saldaña Natke is a founding partner of UrbanWorks, an architecture, planning, and interior design firm in Chicago. She has completed over 5,000 units of housing, six mixed-income developments, office and university projects, and over 65 public school renovations, additions, and new construction.
Go to Profile#967
Heike Vallery
#101733
Overall Influence
Heike Vallery is a German mechanical engineer whose research involves the development of robot legs and exoskeletons to assist in human walking, including applications in prosthetics and medical rehabilitation. She is a professor of biomechanical engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and Alexander von Humboldt Professor at RWTH Aachen University.
Go to Profile#968
Sara Bronin
#86240
Overall Influence
Sara Cecilia Bronin is an American lawyer, professor, and architect. She is the chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Early life and education Bronin graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001, where she earned degrees in architecture and the Plan II honors program. She attended Magdalen College, Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. While there, she co-founded the Oxonian Review and served as its publisher. In 2003, she graduated with a master's degree in economic and social history. She earned a Truman Scholarship for public service, which she used for law school. ...
Go to Profile#969
Clementine Chambon
#109777
Overall Influence
Clementine Chambon is a chemical engineer at Imperial College London, who works on energy solutions for energy-deprived countries. She is the Chief Technology Officer of Oorja Development Solutions, a social enterprise that focused on providing clean energy access to off-grid communities in rural India.
Go to Profile#970
Tequila Harris
#168539
Overall Influence
Tequila Harris is an American mechanical engineer and professor. She is Professor of Manufacturing at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. She works on polymer processing and mechanical system design.
Go to Profile#971
Grace Parraga
#173314
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Grace–Eve Párraga is a Canadian lung-imaging scientist. She is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Lung Imaging to Transform Outcomes at the University of Western Ontario. Early life and education Parraga was born in 1961. She completed her Bachelor of Science and Master's degree in biochemistry from the University of Western Ontario and her PhD at the University of Washington.
Go to Profile#972
Tammy Ma
#161330
Overall Influence
Tammy Ma is an American plasma physicist who works on inertial confinement fusion at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Education and career Ma studied aerospace engineering at the California Institute of Technology, graduating in 2005. She went to the University of California, San Diego for graduate study, earning a master's degree in 2008 and completing her Ph.D. in 2010.
Go to Profile#973
Bryony James
#178134
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Bryony Joanne James is a professor of engineering who is currently based at the University of Waikato. Academic career After a 1997 PhD titled 'The oxidation reactions of heterogeneous carbon cathodes used in the electrolytic production of aluminium' at the University of Auckland, James joined the staff, rising to full professor.
Go to Profile#974
Anousheh Ansari
#120809
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Anousheh Ansari is an Iranian American engineer and co-founder and chairwoman of Prodea Systems. Her previous business accomplishments include serving as co-founder and CEO of Telecom Technologies, Inc. . The Ansari family is also the title sponsor of the Ansari X Prize. On September 18, 2006, a few days after her 40th birthday, she became the first Iranian in space. Ansari was the fourth overall self-funded space tourist, and the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station. Her memoir, My Dream of Stars, co-written with Homer Hickam, was published by Palgrave Macmillan ...
Go to Profile#975
Gabriella Cincotti
#177650
Overall Influence
Gabriella Cincotti is an Italian optical engineer whose research has included the development of photonic devices and their application in medical imaging. She is a professor of engineering at Roma Tre University, in the Department of Civil, Computer Science and Aeronautical Technologies Engineering, and the editor-in-chief of the IEEE Photonics Journal.
Go to Profile#976
Anne Basting
#48427
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Anne Davis Basting, is an American gerontologist working as a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Peck School of the Arts. Her work centers around aging, memory, and dementia, both from the point of view of the elderly and that of society; and of the uses of theater, storytelling, and other arts in eldercare. She is one of the 2016 MacArthur Fellows .
Go to Profile#977
Sandra Kaji-O'Grady
#172370
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Sandra Kaji-O'Grady is an architectural academic and educator based in Brisbane, Australia. She was Professor of Architecture, Dean and Head of the School of Architecture at the University of Queensland until 2018.
Go to Profile#978
Nerea Calvillo
#172188
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Nerea Calvillo is a Spanish architect and researcher who investigates the intersection between architecture, science and technology, as well as feminist studies, new materials and urban political ecology. Specialized in the research of the visual representation of air in the atmosphere, she constructs graphic diagrams for the visualization of invisible microscopic agents in the air and thus influences the improvement of air quality. This project is called "In the Air". In 2023, Columbia university published the essay Aeropolis, Queering Air in Toxixpolluted Worlds.
Go to Profile#979
Sun Wei
#173021
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
Sun Wei was a Chinese civil engineer and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering . Biography Sun was born in Jiaozhou, Shandong, on 20 November 1935. She graduated from the Nanjing Institute of Technology in July 1958 and became a faculty member. She joined the Communist Party of China in 1956. She was promoted to associate professor in 1986 and to full professor in 1991.
Go to Profile#980
Marissa Mayer
#88763
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Marissa Ann Mayer is an American business executive and investor who served as president and chief executive officer of Yahoo! from 2012 to 2017. She was a long-time executive, usability leader and key spokesperson for Google . Mayer later co-founded Sunshine, a startup technology company.
Go to Profile#981
Aindrila Mukhopadhyay
#74148
Overall Influence
Aindrila Mukhopadhyay is an American scientist who is the Division Deputy of the Biological Systems and Engineering Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her research involves microbial engineering for the production of biofuels. She was nominated a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022.
Go to Profile#982
Paulina Jaramillo
#175272
Overall Influence
Paulina Jaramillo is a Colombian-American engineer who is Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University . She serves as Director of the Green Design Institute. Her research focuses on energy system sustainability and climate change. She was selected as an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in 2020.
Go to Profile#983
Linda Bushnell
#97838
Overall Influence
Linda Grace Bushnell is an American expert on networked control systems who works as a research professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Washington and as a program director for the Civic Innovation Challenge and Cyber-Physical Systems programs at the National Science Foundation.
Go to Profile#984
Rachel Harrison
#68342
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Rachel Harrison is an American visual artist known for her sculpture, photography, and drawing. Her work often combines handmade forms with found objects or photographs, bringing art history, politics, and pop culture into dialogue with one another. She has been included in numerous exhibitions in Europe and the US, including the Venice Biennale , the Whitney Biennial and the Tate Triennial . Her work is in the collections of major museums such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Tate Modern, London; among others.
Go to Profile#985
Kiisa Nishikawa
#173750
Overall Influence
Kiisa Nishikawa is a biomechanist, and holds the rank of Regents' Professor of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University. Research career Nishikawa is the principal investigator leading the Muscle and Motor Control Laboratory at Northern Arizona University , where her laboratory investigates muscle contraction, including the role of titin and developing bio-inspired control algorithms for motorized prostheses for lower limbs. Previously, Nishikawa's lab acquired an atomic force microscope in order to test how changes in the giant titin protein impact muscle mechanical properties . Nis...
Go to Profile#986
Eleni Diamanti
#106192
Overall Influence
Eleni Diamanti is a Greek engineer who is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research . Diamanti serves as Vice Director of the Paris Centre for Quantum Computing. She was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant in 2018.
Go to Profile#987
Elizabeth Grant
#117705
Overall Influence
1963 - 2022 (59 years)
Elizabeth Grant CF was an Australian architectural anthropologist, criminologist and academic working in the field of Indigenous Architecture. She was a Churchill Fellow and held academic positions at The University of Adelaide, as Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University's RMIT School of Architecture and Design, Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra and the University of Queensland. She researched, wrote, and was an activist focused on architecture and design with Indigenous peoples as architectural practice and a social movement, and the observance of human rights in institutional architecture .
Go to Profile#988
Carla Pugh
#139125
Overall Influence
Carla Marie Pugh is an American surgeon. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2021 for "pioneering sensor technology research that helped to define, characterize and inspire new and innovative performance metrics and data analysis strategies for the emerging field of digital health care."
Go to Profile#989
Krista Donaldson
#164930
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Krista M. Donaldson is a Canadian–American engineer. She is the CEO of D-Rev, a product design and engineering company that specialises in products for less industrialised countries. Early life and education Born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Donaldson attended Queen Elizabeth High School before earning her engineering degrees from Vanderbilt University and Stanford University.
Go to Profile#990
Mooi Choo Chuah
#179100
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Mooi Choo Chuah from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for contributions to wireless network system and protocol design. In 2017, she was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Go to Profile#991
Vivian Mushahwar
#173261
Overall Influence
Vivian K. Mushahwar is an American-Canadian biomedical engineer. She is a Canada Research Chair in Functional Restoration at the University of Alberta and Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.
Go to Profile#992
Ann E. Elsner
#175837
Overall Influence
Ann E. Elsner is an American researcher and Distinguished Professor of Optometry, Indiana University Bloomington. Biography Elsner earned a B.A. degree from Indiana University Bloomington, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. In 1987, she joined the Schepens Eye Research Institute as a researcher. In 2005, she moved to Indiana University Bloomington and became a professor in the School of Optometry and director of the Borish Center for Ophthalmic Research. In the same year, she founded and became CEO of Aeon Imaging, a bioimaging technology firm.
Go to Profile#993
Shelly Miller
#177453
Overall Influence
Shelly Lynn Miller is an American mechanical engineer who is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research investigates indoor air quality and urban air pollution. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Miller studied the spread of COVID-19 and how to minimize the spread of coronavirus.
Go to Profile#994
Kristina M. Johnson
#159663
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Kristina M. Johnson is an American business executive and academic administrator. She previously served as the 13th chancellor of the State University of New York from 2017 to 2020 and the 16th president of Ohio State University from 2020 to 2023. She has knowledge in the development of optoelectronic processing systems, 3-D imaging, and color-management systems.
Go to Profile#995
Alma Y. Alanís
#171995
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Alma Yolanda Alanís García is a Mexican electrical engineer and control theorist specializing in intelligent control, and in particular in the use of artificial neural networks for applications including the control of electric motors, robot manipulators, and unmanned aerial vehicles. She is a chair professor and researcher in the Department of Computational Sciences at the University of Guadalajara.
Go to Profile#996
Padmaja Subbarao
#111398
Overall Influence
Padmaja Subbarao is a Canadian respirologist and scientist in physiology and experimental medicine. She is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Pediatric Asthma and Lung Health at the University of Toronto and the Associate Chief of Clinical Research at SickKids Hospital.
Go to Profile#997
Susan Strasberg
#65534
Overall Influence
1938 - 1999 (61 years)
Susan Elizabeth Strasberg was an American stage, film, and television actress. Thought to be the next Hepburn-type ingenue, she was nominated for a Tony Award at age 18, playing the title role in The Diary of Anne Frank. She appeared on the covers of LIFE and Newsweek in 1955. A close friend of Marilyn Monroe and Richard Burton, she wrote two best-selling tell-all books. Her later career primarily consisted of slasher and horror films, followed by TV roles, by the 1980s.
Go to Profile#998
Eleanor Schofield
#171637
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Eleanor Josephine Schofield is the Head of Conservation & Collections Care at the Mary Rose Trust. She is an honorary Professor at the University of Kent. In 2015 she was selected as one of the Royal Society of Chemistry 175 Faces of Chemistry.
Go to Profile#999
Helen Greiner
#169258
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Helen Greiner is a co-founder of iRobot and former CEO of CyPhy Work, Inc., a start-up company specializing in small multi-rotor drones for the consumer, commercial and military markets. Ms Greiner is currently the CEO of Tertill Corporation.
Go to Profile#1000
Lesia L. Crumpton-Young
#173674
Overall Influence
Lesia L. Crumpton-Young is an American engineer and academic administrator. Served as the 13th president of Texas Southern University from 2021 to 2023. She was previously the provost and chief academic officer of Morgan State University.
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