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,

#1101

Sandra Vivanco

#180523
Overall Influence
Sandra Vivanco was a Peruvian-born architect, educator, writer, and professor at the California College of the Arts. She practiced architecture in Japan, Portugal, Peru, Italy, Mexico and Brazil. Education Vivanco was born in Lima, Peru, and received her undergraduate education from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1985 and her Master of Architectures from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in 1991. She taught at Barnard College and Columbia University in New York, UC Berkeley, Escola da Cidade in São Paulo and Universidad Ricardo Palma ...
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#1102

Weihua Zhang

#183887
Overall Influence
Weihua Zhang is a Canadian electrical engineer, currently a Canada Research Chair at University of Waterloo and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Canadian Academy of Engineering and Engineering Institute of Canada. From 2007 to 2013, she was the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.
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#1103

Diane Brand

#181015
Overall Influence
Diane Joy Brand is a New Zealand architecture academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a BArch at Auckland in 1979 and practising professionally, Brand did a post-professional master's of architecture in urban design at Harvard. Returning to Auckland for a PhD, her 2001 doctoral thesis was titled Southern crossings: colonial urban design in Australia and New Zealand. She subsequently entered academia, working at both Victoria University of Wellington and then back to the University of Auckland.
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#1104

Sabrina Raaf

#162181
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Sabrina Raaf is an American, Chicago-based, mechanized sculpture artist, and photographer. Career Sabrina Raaf attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. receiving her Bachelors in the School of Foreign Service. After graduating in 1994, she attended Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C.. At Corcoran she befriended David Adamson while attending his computer-art class, and in 1995, Raaf became gallery intern at the David Adamson Gallery. As a photographer and aspiring curator, Raaf organized a show of women photographers including herself.
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#1105

Samantha Shapiro

#81349
Overall Influence
1993 - Present (31 years)
Samantha "Sami" Shapiro is an American gymnast. She is a five-time member of the US Women's National Gymnastics Team. She was the 2007 U.S. junior uneven bars champion, 2008 U.S. junior uneven bars and balance beam champion, 2008 Pan American Champion in both women's uneven bars and balance beam, and 2014 NCAA uneven bars silver medalist.
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#1106

Elsa Leviseur

#119764
Overall Influence
1932 - 2023 (91 years)
Elsa Leviseur was a South African architect specializing in landscape and ecology. She practiced in South Africa and later in England and the US. She was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1931. Her mother was Beryl Iris Basson and her father was doctor Ernest Alfred Leviseur . She married conductor Ernest Fleischmann in 1953 at the age of 22. Motivated by her friends and her keen interest in forestry, she joined architecture and earned a B.Arch. degree at the University of Cape Town School of Architecture in 1954. She started a small office in South Africa and worked on designing hospitals, h...
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#1107

Jane Grande-Allen

#182120
Overall Influence
Katie Jane Grande-Allen is an American bioengineer currently the Isabel C. Cameron Professor at Rice University. She is currently chair of the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University. Her research focuses on an engineering approach to heart disease.
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#1108

Amy Fleischer

#99217
Overall Influence
Amy S. Fleischer is an American mechanical engineer whose research concerns thermal engineering, including sustainable energy, thermal energy storage using phase-change materials, and energy recovery from the heat management of electronic devices. She is dean of the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo College of Engineering.
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#1109

Betar Gallant

#180329
Overall Influence
Betar Maurkah Gallant is an American engineer who is an associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research investigates the development of new materials for batteries. She worked with Barack Obama on an educational initiative to train young Americans in clean energy.
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#1110

Claire Freeman

#144313
Overall Influence
Claire Freeman is a New Zealand geography and urban planning academic. Career After a PhD at Leeds, Freeman worked at University of the North West, Leeds Metropolitan University and Massey University before moving to Otago University, where she's been a full professor since 2015
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#1111

Blanche Capel

#106841
Overall Influence
Blanche Capel is an American biologist and James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology at Duke University. Her research focuses on vertebrate sex determination. Education After graduating with a BA in Literature and Art History from Hollins College, Capel married and focused on raising her children. She became interested in further study by the time her children reached school age and took various undergraduate classes at Haverford and Bryn Mawr College. Following two years in Haverford's molecular biology program, she started to work towards a PhD in genetics at the laboratory of Beatrice Mintz at the Fox Chase Cancer Center.
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#1112

Mahsa Mohaghegh

#151411
Overall Influence
Mahsa Mohaghegh is an Iranian-born New Zealand computer engineer specialising in artificial intelligence and natural language processing. She is a professor of information technology and software engineering at Auckland University of Technology.
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#1113

Renetta Garrison Tull

Renetta Garrison Tull
#175896
Overall Influence
Renetta Garrison Tull is an American electrical engineer, global policy strategist, and works to advance diversity and inclusion in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics . Tull is the inaugural Vice Chancellor of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at University of California, Davis and a founding Director of the National Science Foundation funded program PROMISE: Alliances for Graduate Education and Professoriate, which aims to increase the number of underrepresented students in STEM. Tull previously served as Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives at the University of Maryland, Balt...
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#1114

Bow-sim Mark

#56268
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Bow-sim Mark is a Chinese martial arts grandmaster who lives in Newton, Massachusetts, US. She is the mother of martial arts film star, Donnie Yen. Training Mark was born in Guangzhou, Republic of China in 1942. She began studying martial arts at elementary school, training seriously in high school and then at Wushu training schools, specialising in tai chi and Northern Shaolin. Mark learned Fu Style Wudangquan by training under Fu Wing Fay for 10 years; Wing Fay was the eldest son and top student of Grandmaster Fu Chen Sung. She was an instructor at Wing Fay's school from 1968 to 1974.
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#1115

Berna Dengiz

#181525
Overall Influence
Berna Dengiz is a Turkish industrial engineer, the dean of engineering and professor of industrial engineering at Başkent University. Her research involves the heuristic optimization of complex systems.
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#1116

Silvia Ferrari

#174570
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Silvia Ferrari is an Italian-American aerospace engineer. She is John Brancaccio Professor at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University and also the director of the Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Control at the same university.
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#1117

Monika Ivantysynova

#184541
Overall Influence
1955 - 2018 (63 years)
Monika Ivantysynova was an East German-born engineer specializing in fluid power, known for her design of piston pumps and valveless hydraulic actuators and more generally for her leadership in the field of fluid power research. She was Maha Named Professor in Fluid Power Systems for Mechanical Engineering and Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University.
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#1118

Sonia Martínez Díaz

#180299
Overall Influence
Sonia Martínez Díaz is a Spanish mechanical engineer whose research applies control theory to the coordinated motion of robot swarms and mobile wireless sensor networks. She is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.
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#1119

Adah Almutairi

#170830
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Adah Almutairi is a scientist and professor at the University of California, San Diego . Her work focuses on nanomedicine, nanotechnology, chemistry and polymer science. Early life and education Almutairi was born on November 1, 1976, in Portland, Oregon, United States to Saudi parents.
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#1120

Jin Kim Montclare

Jin Kim Montclare
#137494
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Jin Kim Montclare is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at New York University. She creates novel proteins that can be used in drug delivery, tissue regeneration and as medical treatment. She is a 2019 AAAS Leshner Leadership Fellow and has been inducted to the AIMBE College of Fellows.
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#1121

Victoria Morgan

#171986
Overall Influence
Victoria L. Morgan is an American biomedical engineer who is a professor of neurology and radiology at Vanderbilt University. She makes use of functional magnetic resonance imaging to understand neural activation and function. Her research looks to quantify and understand the impact of epilepsy in the brain.
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#1122

Carmen Espegel

Carmen Espegel
#183562
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Carmen Espegel Alonso, is a Doctor of Architecture at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid , where she teaches Architectural Project classes representing the Espegel Teaching Unit. She has been working at her own studio since 1985 and in 2003 she founded the firm espegel-fisac arquitectos. Her reference work, "Heroines of Space. Women Architects in the Modern Movement" , is a theoretical and historical synthesis of the role of women in Architecture.
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#1123

Cinzia Zuffada

#182531
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Cinzia Zuffada is an Italian-American engineer who is the Associate Chief Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her role considers the strategic planning of scientific programs for JPL and the development of reflectometry technologies for Global navigation satellite systems. She is the chair of the Board of the Italian Scientists & Scholars in North America Foundation.
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#1124

Lily Elefteriadou

#183991
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Ageliki Elefteriadou is a Greek-American civil engineer specializing in traffic flow, including route capacity, phase transitions from fast to slow traffic flow , traffic optimization, and traffic simulation. She is Barbara Goldsby Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Florida, where she directs the University of Florida Transportation Institute.
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#1125

Farah Al Qasimi

#172087
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (33 years)
Farah Al Qasimi is a photographer from the United Arab Emirates, living in Brooklyn, New York. She is known for her photographs of life in the Persian Gulf. Life and work Al Qasimi earned a BA from Yale University. In 2018 she moved to New York City and worked as an administrator for New York University Abu Dhabi before returning to Yale for her MFA.
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#1126

Marilyn da Silva

#160273
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Marilyn da Silva is an American sculptor, metalsmith, jeweler, and educator. She teaches and serves as a department head at the California College of the Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. Da Silva has won numerous awards including honorary fellow by the American Craft Council .
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#1127

Betsy Schneider

#109840
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Betsy Schneider is an American photographer who lives and works in the Boston Area. Biography After her graduation from the University of Michigan in 1987, she studied and received a second bachelor's degree in film and photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 1990, from 1993 to 1995, she worked as an assistant to photographer Sally Mann she earned an MFA from Mills College in 1997. In 1997 she moved to London with Electro-acoustic composer Frank Ekeberg where their daughter Madeleine was born. During that time her work was exhibited frequently in the UK and Scandinavia.
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#1128

Judy Brown

#95420
Overall Influence
Judith "Judy" C. Brown is an American physicist and professor emerita at Wellesley College. She was a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab in the Machine Listening Group for over 20 years, and is recognized for her contributions in music information retrieval, including developing the constant-Q transform. She is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and has served on the ASA technical committees for musical acoustics and animal bioacoustics.
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#1129

Vicki Bier

#175781
Overall Influence
Vicki Marion Bier is an American systems engineer and decision analyst whose work concerns risk management, disaster preparedness, and critical infrastructure protection, including analysis of the safety of nuclear power, anti-terrorism, and preparedness for sea level rise caused by global warming. She is professor emerita of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, an external fellow in the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events at the University of Southern California, and editor-in-chief of the journal Decision Analysis.
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#1130

Caitriona Lally

#112008
Overall Influence
Caitríona Lally is an Irish writer. She has published two novels: Eggshells and Wunderland . In 2018 she was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Biography Lally studied English literature at Trinity College Dublin. After graduating in 2004, she taught English in Japan and spent time travelling abroad. She then worked as a copywriter, and as a home aide in New York.
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#1131

Mara Servetto

#125502
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Margherita Servetto , better known as Mara, is an Italian architect and designer. Biography She studied at the Polytechnic University of Turin, where she received her degree in architecture under the supervision of Achille Castiglioni. When Castiglioni obtained a teaching position at the Polytechnic University of Milan, she moved to Milan in order to collaborate with Castiglioni, which she did until 1990.
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#1132

Mahyat Shafapour Tehrany

#185206
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (39 years)
Mahyat Shafapour Tehrany , is an Iranian geomatic engineer specializing in GIS, natural hazards and data analysis. Life Mahyat Shafapour Tehrany was born on July 29, 1985, in Tehran, Iran. In 2008, she completed a B.S. in environmental engineering, majoring in natural resources engineering and the environment at the Allameh Mohaddes Nouri University. In 2013, she earned a M.S. in remote sensing and geographic information system at the Universiti Putra Malaysia . She earned a Ph.D. in GIS and geomatic engineering at UPM in 2015.
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#1133

Mercedes Maroto-Valer

#178153
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer FRSE FRSC FIChemE FRSA FEI is Champion and Director of the UK Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre focused on accelerating the transition to net zero of the UK largest industrial clusters and establishing the first world net-zero industrial cluster. Prof Maroto-Valer is Deputy Principal at Heriot-Watt University, leading institutional and global changes in sustainability, making a significant impact on achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and working with partners to achieve global carbon reduction targets. She is als...
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#1134

Michelle S. Hoo Fatt

#119226
Overall Influence
Michelle S. Hoo Fatt is an American mechanical engineer whose research concerns the mechanics of blasts, impacts, buckling, and the ability of sandwich-structured composite materials to resist blasts and ballistic impacts. She is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Akron.
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#1135

Elizabeth R. Cantwell

#178058
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Elizabeth R. Cantwell is the president of Utah State University, a role she began on August 1, 2023. Education Cantwell has a B.A. in Human Behavior from the University of Chicago . In 1992, she received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2003, she earned an MBA in Finance & Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School.
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#1136

Jane H. Davidson

#183950
Overall Influence
Jane H. Davidson is an American mechanical engineer whose research involves renewable energy, thermal energy storage, alternative fuel, and solar-powered carbon capture and storage for the energy needs of homes, workplaces, and vehicles. She is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota, where she directs the Solar Energy Laboratory, and is the former Ronald L. and Janet A. Christenson chair of renewable energy at the university.
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#1137

Audeen W. Fentiman

#180453
Overall Influence
Audeen W. Fentiman is an American engineer, and Crowley Family Professor in Engineering Education, at Purdue University. She is Associate Dean of Graduate Education and Interdisciplinary Programs. She is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society. She won a Sharon Keillor Award for Women in Engineering Education.
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#1138

Lynn Tomlinson

#107662
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (123 years)
Lynn Tomlinson is an animator and artist. She is a professor at Towson University. She lives in Baltimore, MD, with her husband, Craig J Saper, and her family. She has taught at Cornell University, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Maryland Institute College of Art, and Delaware College of Art and Design, Richard Stockton College, and Tufts University. Her films have been screened at film festivals around the world over the past two decades. She has received awards and grants including several Mid-Atlantic Emmys, an ITVS production grant, and Individual Artist Fellowships from the S...
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#1139

Glenda Dickerson

Glenda Dickerson
#107637
Overall Influence
1945 - 2012 (67 years)
Glenda Dickerson was an American director, folklorist, adaptor, writer, choreographer, actor, black theatre organizer, and educator. She was the second African-American woman to direct on Broadway, with her 1980 musical production of Reggae: a musical revelation. She is known throughout the American Theater as a promoter of a "womanist" direction in the theater and her work focused on folklore, myths, black legends, and classical works reinterpreted. She worked in venues including the Biltmore Theatre , Circle in the Square , The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre , Ford's Theatre and the Kennedy Center .
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#1140

Clara Brink Shoemaker

#182711
Overall Influence
1921 - 2009 (88 years)
Clara Brink Shoemaker was a Dutch-born American crystallographer and a senior research professor at Oregon State University. As a postdoctoral researcher, she worked on the structure determination of vitamin B12 in the group of Dorothy Hodgkin. Together with her husband, David Shoemaker, she contributed to the research on transition metal phases and intermetallic compounds. They were the first to recognize that interstices in tetrahedrally close-packed metal crystals are exclusively tetrahedral and only have four types of coordination polyhedra.
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#1141

Chi Chia-fen

#175270
Overall Influence
Chia-fen Christine Chi is a Taiwanese industrial engineer. Chi Chia-fen earned her bachelor's of science degree from the Tunghai University Department of Industrial Engineering. She completed master's and doctoral studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Chi became a professor at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology in 1998, and was named a distinguished professor in 2012. Prior to her appointment to a distinguished professorship, Chi served as chair of the industrial management department from 2008 to 2010, associate dean of the school of management between 2010 and 2011, and dean of international affairs from 2011 to 2013.
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#1142

Adrienne Stiff-Roberts

#173606
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Adrienne Stiff-Roberts is an American electrical engineering and Jeffrey N. Vinik Professor of Electrical and computer engineering at Duke University. Her research is on novel hybrid materials for optoelectronic and energy devices.
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#1143

Adrienne Lavine

#185723
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Adrienne S. Lavine is an American mechanical engineer specializing in heat transfer, thermal energy, and energy storage, and known as a coauthor of several widely used textbooks on heat transfer. She is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, director of the UCLA Modeling of Complex Thermal Systems Laboratory, and a former associate vice provost at UCLA.
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#1144

Naia Butler-Craig

#132773
Overall Influence
Naia Butler-Craig is a science communicator and an American aerospace engineer. Early life and education As of 2022, she is a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research fellow in the High-Power Electric Propulsion Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She joined Georgia Tech to pursue her doctoral research on electric propulsion after graduating from Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University and working in the Space and Science Technology Systems Branch at NASA Glenn Research Center.
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#1145

Susan Bright

#92013
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Susan Bright is a British writer and curator of photography, specializing in how photography is made, disseminated and interpreted. She has curated exhibitions internationally at institutions including: Tate Britain, National Portrait Gallery in London and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago amongst others.
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#1146

Ana Miljacki

#182521
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Ana Miljački is a historian, theorist, educator and curator of architecture. She is an Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT where she directs the Critical Broadcasting Lab, the Architecture and Urbanism Group and the Master of Architecture Program.
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#1147

Margaret Burnham Geddes

#109038
Overall Influence
1907 - 1995 (88 years)
Margaret Burnham Geddes was an American architect, urban planner, and activist who worked in Providence, Rhode Island. She designed several early modernist houses in southern New England with partner J. Peter Geddes and worked as a planner for the Providence Redevelopment Agency.
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#1148

Brooke E. Sheldon

#101001
Overall Influence
1931 - 2013 (82 years)
Brooke E. Sheldon was an American librarian and educator who served as the president of the American Library Association from 1983 to 1984. Career Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Sheldon also grew up in Nova Scotia. She graduated from Cambridge High and Latin School in Cambridge, Massachusetts before returning to Nova Scotia to attend Acadia University as an undergraduate. She earned her master's degree in library science from Simmons College and a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. She worked as a librarian at the Detroit Public Library, the Albuquerque Public Library, the Santa Fe...
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#1149

Françoise Lamnabhi-Lagarrigue

#173109
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Françoise Lamnabhi-Lagarrigue is a French control theorist, retired from the French National Centre for Scientific Research as an emeritus distinguished research fellow. Education and career Lamnabhi-Lagarrigue was born on Lamnabhi-Lagarrigue31 December 1953 in Toulouse. She earned a master's degree in mathematics through Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse in 1976, and then moved to Paris-Sud University, where she earned a diplôme d'études approfondies in signal processing in 1978, a PhD in 1980, and a habilitation in 1985.
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#1150

Hilary Bart-Smith

#185573
Overall Influence
Hilary Bart-Smith is a Scottish mechanical engineer known for her work on biologically inspired structures including robot fish. She is professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Virginia, where she is the founder of both the Multifunctional Materials and Structures Laboratory and the Bio-inspired Engineering Research Laboratory.
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