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,
#1
Zaha Hadid
#326
Overall Influence
1950 - 2016 (66 years)
Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid was an Iraqi and British architect, artist and designer, recognized as a major figure in architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Hadid studied mathematics as an undergraduate and then enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1972. In search of an alternative system to traditional architectural drawing, and influenced by Suprematism and the Russian avant-garde, Hadid adopted painting as a design tool and abstraction as an investigative principle to "reinvestigate the aborted and untested experiments of ...
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Denise Scott Brown
#1364
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Denise Scott Brown is an American architect, planner, writer, educator, and principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in Philadelphia. Scott Brown and her husband and partner, Robert Venturi , are regarded as among the most influential architects of the twentieth century, both through their architecture and planning, and theoretical writing and teaching.
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Valentina Tereshkova
#577
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova is a Russian engineer, member of the State Duma, and former Soviet cosmonaut, being the first woman ever to fly in space. She was the first woman in space, having flown a solo mission on Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963. She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space, is the only woman to have been on a solo space mission and is the last surviving Vostok programme cosmonaut. She was the youngest woman to fly in space until 2023 when Anastatia Mayers flew on Galactic 02 at the age of 18. Since Mayers flew a suborbital mission, Tereshkova remains the ...
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Kazuyo Sejima
#3879
Overall Influence
Kazuyo Sejima is a Japanese architect and director of her own firm, Kazuyo Sejima & Associates. In 1995, she co-founded the firm SANAA . In 2010, Sejima was the second woman to receive the Pritzker Prize, which was awarded jointly with Nishizawa.
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Arati Prabhakar
#3020
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Arati Prabhakar is an American engineer and public official. Since October 3, 2022, she has served as the 12th director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Science Advisor to the President.
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Ada Louise Huxtable
#2628
Overall Influence
1921 - 2013 (92 years)
Ada Louise Huxtable was an American architecture critic and writer on architecture. Huxtable established architecture and urban design journalism in North America and raised the public's awareness of the urban environment. In 1970, she was awarded the first ever Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In 1981, she was named a MacArthur Fellow. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger, also a Pulitzer Prize-winner for architectural criticism, said in 1996: "Before Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture was not a part of the public dialogue." "She was a great lover of cities, a great preservationist and the central planet around which every other critic revolved," said architect Robert A.
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Cynthia Barnhart
#4718
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Cynthia Barnhart is an American civil engineer and academic, serving as the current Provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She previously served as the University's Chancellor, the first woman to hold that position.
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Maya Lin
#1927
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Maya Ying Lin is an American designer and sculptor. In 1981, while an undergraduate at Yale University, she achieved national recognition when she won a national design competition for the planned Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
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Barbara Oakley
#4280
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Barbara Ann Oakley is an American professor of engineering at Oakland University and McMaster University whose online courses on learning are some of the most popular massive open online course classes in the world. She is involved in multiple areas of research, ranging from STEM education, to learning practices.
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Mary Barra
#2586
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Mary Teresa Barra is an American businesswoman who has been the chair and chief executive officer of General Motors since January 15, 2014. She is the first female CEO of a 'Big Three' automaker. In December 2013, GM named her to succeed Daniel Akerson as CEO. Prior to being named CEO, Barra was executive vice president of global product development, purchasing, and supply chain.
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Stephanie Wilson
#8206
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Stephanie Diana Wilson is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut. She flew to space onboard three Space Shuttle missions, and is the second African American woman to go into space, after Mae Jemison. her 42 days in space are the second most of any female African American astronaut, having been surpassed by Jessica Watkins in 2022.
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Naoko Yamazaki
#12904
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
is a Japanese engineer and former astronaut at JAXA. She was the second Japanese woman to fly in space. The first was Chiaki Mukai. Early life Yamazaki was born Naoko Sumino in Matsudo City. She spent two years of her childhood in Sapporo. After graduating from Ochanomizu University Senior High School in 1989, Yamazaki earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1993 and a Master of Science degree with a major in Aerospace Engineering in 1996.
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Cini Boeri
#9775
Overall Influence
1924 - 2020 (96 years)
Maria Cristina Mariani Dameno, known as "Cini Boeri" was an Italian architect and designer. She was considered "one of the great pioneering women in Italian design and architecture", who was described as a "formidable architect and designer, paragon of Milanese elegance and verve."
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Farah Pahlavi
#950
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Farah Pahlavi is the widow of the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and was successively Queen and Empress of Iran from 1959 to 1979. She was born into a prosperous family whose fortunes were diminished after her father's early death. While studying architecture in Paris, she was introduced to the Shah at the Iranian embassy, and they were married in December 1959. The Shah's first two marriages had not produced a son—necessary for royal succession—resulting in great rejoicing at the birth of Crown Prince Reza in October of the following year. Diba was then free to pursue interests other than domestic duties, though she was not allowed a political role.
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Dina Katabi
#5052
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Dina Katabi is the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and the director of the MIT Wireless Center. Academic biography Katabi received a bachelor's degree from the University of Damascus in 1995 and M.S and Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT in 1998 and 2003 respectively. In 2003, Katabi joined MIT, where she holds the title of Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She is the co-director of the MIT Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing and a principal investigator at MIT's Computer Science a...
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Francine Houben
#8651
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Francine Marie Jeanne Houben is a Dutch architect. She graduated with cum laude honours from the Delft University of Technology. She is the founding partner and creative director of Mecanoo architecten, based in Delft, The Netherlands.
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Mona Jarrahi
#14743
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Mona Jarrahi is an Iranian Engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She investigates novel materials, terahertz/millimeter-wave electronics and optoelectronics, microwave photonics, imaging and spectroscopy systems.
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Carol E. Reiley
#7268
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Carol Elizabeth Reiley is an American business executive, computer scientist, and model. She is a pioneer in teleoperated and autonomous robot systems in surgery, space exploration, disaster rescue, and self-driving cars. Reiley has worked at Intuitive Surgical, Lockheed Martin, and General Electric. She co-founded, invested in, and was president of Drive.ai, and is now CEO of a healthcare startup, a creative advisor for the San Francisco Symphony, and a brand ambassador for Guerlain Cosmetics. She is a published children's book author, the first female engineer on the cover of MAKE magazine,...
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Sandra Magnus
#12617
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Sandra Hall Magnus is an American engineer and a former NASA astronaut. She returned to Earth with the crew of STS-119 Discovery on March 28, 2009, after having spent 134 days in orbit. She was assigned to the crew of STS-135, the final mission of the Space Shuttle. She is also a licensed amateur radio operator with the call sign KE5FYE. From 2012 until 2018 Magnus was the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
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Susan Rogers
#7140
Overall Influence
Susan Rogers is an American professor, sound engineer, and record producer best known for being Prince's staff engineer during his commercial peak , including on albums like Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day, Parade, Sign o' the Times, and The Black Album." During this time, Rogers laid the foundations for Prince's now-famous vault by beginning the process of collecting and cataloguing all his studio and live recordings. She has also worked as a sound engineer and record producer for other musical artists such as Barenaked Ladies , David Byrne, Robben Ford, Jeff Black, Rusted Root, Tricky, Michael Penn, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and Tevin Campbell.
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Jeanne Gang
#9593
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Jeanne Gang is an American architect and the founder and leader of Studio Gang , an architecture and urban design practice with offices in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Gang was first widely recognized for the Aqua Tower, the tallest woman-designed building in the world at the time of its completion. Aqua has since been surpassed by the nearby St. Regis Chicago, also of her design. Surface has called Gang one of Chicago's most prominent architects of her generation, and her projects have been widely awarded.
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Jane Drew
#7041
Overall Influence
1911 - 1996 (85 years)
Dame Jane Drew , was an English modernist architect and town planner. She qualified at the Architectural Association School in London, and prior to World War II became one of the leading exponents of the Modern Movement in London.
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Itsuko Hasegawa
#19757
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
is a Japanese architect. Biography Itsuko Hasegawa was born in Yaizu City, Japan in 1941. She studied at the Department of Architecture at Kanto Gakuin University, graduating in 1964. From then until 1969, she worked with Kiyonori Kikutake and then spent two years studying at Tokyo Institute of Technology. From 1971-78 she worked under Kazuo Shinohara at the institute. She has lectured in Rotterdam, Australia, Norway and Los Angeles between 1984-7. She became the principal of her own design studio in Tokyo, called Itsuko Hasegawa Architectural Design Studio in 1976, which was renamed the Arch...
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Beatriz Colomina
#14788
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Beatriz Colomina is an architecture historian, theorist and curator. She is the founding director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University, the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture and director of graduate studies in the School of Architecture.
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Diana Agrest
#10828
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Diana I. Agrest is a practicing architect and urban designer and an architecture and urban design theorist, in New York City. From the beginning of her career, while still a student, she started developing critical work on urban discourse as a result of the inefficiency of the existing urban design theories and models, and her need to find alternative ways to think about the city in relation to her practice. As a result, she developed critical work, both in theory and practice alternatively. She was on the forefront of a poststructuralist approach as a tool for critically re-thinking architec...
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Elizabeth Diller
#13152
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Elizabeth Diller, also known as Liz Diller, is an American architect and partner in Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which she co-founded in 1979. She is also an architecture professor at Princeton University.
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Neri Oxman
#8522
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Neri Oxman is an American–Israeli designer and professor known for art and architecture that combines design, biology, computing, and materials engineering. She coined the phrase "material ecology" to define her work.
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Samantha Cristoforetti
#7391
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Samantha Cristoforetti is an Italian European Space Agency astronaut, former Italian Air Force pilot and engineer. She holds the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight by a European astronaut , and she held the record for the longest single space flight by a woman until this was broken by Peggy Whitson in June 2017, and later by Christina Koch. She is also the first Italian woman in space. She took command of ISS Expedition 68 on 28 September 2022.
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Réka Albert
#6533
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Réka Albert is a Romanian-Hungarian scientist. She is a distinguished professor of physics and adjunct professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University and is noted for the Barabási–Albert model and research into scale-free networks and Boolean modeling of biological systems.
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Joan Higginbotham
#13851
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Joan Elizabeth Higginbotham is an electrical engineer and a former NASA astronaut. She flew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-116 as a mission specialist and is the third African American woman to go into space, after Mae Jemison and Stephanie Wilson.
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Martha Schwartz
#20754
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Martha Schwartz is an American landscape architect and educator. Schwartz is the founding principal of Martha Schwartz Partners, an architecture firm based in London, New York City, and Shanghai. She is also Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
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Odile Decq
#12649
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Odile Decq is a French architect, urban planner and academic. She is the founder of the Paris firm, Studio Odile Decq and the architecture school, Confluence Institute. Decq is known for her self-described goth appearance and style.
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Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
#9987
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk is a professor at the University of Miami's School of Architecture and an architect and urban planner in Miami, Florida. Plater-Zyberk is considered to be a representative of the New Urbanism school of urban planning, and an advocate of the New Classical school of architecture. She is also a co-founder and principal of DPZ CoDesign, a Miami-based architecture firm.
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Cindy Sherman
#1834
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often considered to be the collected Untitled Film Stills, a series of 70 black-and-white photographs of herself evoking typical female roles in performance media . In the 1980s, she used color film and large prints, and focused more on costume, lighting and facial expression.
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Farinaz Koushanfar
#12516
Overall Influence
Farinaz Koushanfar is an Iranian-American computer scientist whose research concerns embedded systems, ad-hoc networks, and computer security. She is a professor and Henry Booker Faculty Scholar of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.
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Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic
#15496
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic FRSC is a Serbian American biomedical engineer and university professor. She is a University Professor at Columbia University, as well as the Mikati Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Sciences. She also heads the laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering at Columbia University. She is part of the faculty at the Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Center for Human Development, both found at Columbia University. She is also an honorary professor at the Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy at the University of Belgrade, an honorary p...
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Carme Pinós
#19901
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Carme Pinós is a Spanish architect. Biography Pinós graduated Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona in Barcelona in 1979 and returned to the school in 1981 to study Urbanism. From 1982 on she formed a partnership with her husband, Enric Miralles, which ended in 1991. During this period the projects developed include the Igualada Cemetery Park, the Archery Range Buildings for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games and the La Llauna School in Badalona. The work of Pinós-Miralles received awards on several occasions, including the FAD prize for the La Llauna School and the Igualada Cemet...
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Paola Antonelli
#16123
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Paola Antonelli is an Italian architect, curator, author, editor, and educator. Antonelli is the Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art , New York, where she also serves as the founding Director of Research and Development. She has been described as "one of the 25 most incisive design visionaries in the world" by TIME magazine.
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Yoky Matsuoka
#9393
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Yoky Matsuoka is the CEO and Founder of Yohana . She was the CTO of Google Nest, a co-founder of Google X and previously held roles as VP of Technology and Analytics at Twitter, technology executive at Apple, and as VP of Technology at Nest.
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Mary Cunningham Boyce
#26359
Overall Influence
Mary Cunningham Boyce is a professor of engineering at Columbia University. She was provost of Columbia University from July 2021 to June 2023. Previously, she was dean of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science from 2013 to 2021.
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Frances Bronet
#23081
Overall Influence
Frances Bronet is a Canadian architect and academic administrator, currently serving as president of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Education Bronet holds three undergraduate degrees from McGill University, including a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and professional Bachelor of Architecture from the McGill School of Architecture as well as a degree in civil engineering. She also completed a management diploma program. Bronet later earned an Master of Science in Architectural Design from Columbia University. She is a member of Ordre des architectes du Québec.
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Farshid Moussavi
#18897
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Farshid Moussavi is an Iranian-born British architect, educator, and author. She is the founder of Farshid Moussavi Architecture and a Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The work of her London-based practice, FMA, is celebrated for projects that integrate an inventive approach to space and materials and a strong social awareness, whether they be a cultural centre such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland or a community centre such as the Ismaili Center Houston , a social housing project in Montpellier, or an elementary school in Saclay , both in France.
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Daniela L. Rus
#11571
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Daniela L. Rus is a roboticist and computer scientist, Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Vandi Verma
#15523
Overall Influence
Vandana "Vandi" Verma is a space roboticist and chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, known for driving the Mars rovers, notably Curiosity and Perseverance, using software including PLEXIL programming technology that she co-wrote and developed.
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Lois Graham
#17483
Overall Influence
1925 - 2013 (88 years)
Lois Graham was a professor of thermodynamics and cryogenics. She was the first woman to earn a mechanical engineering PhD in the United States. Graham is remembered for her lifelong work recruiting young women into careers in science and engineering. She taught for nearly 40 years in the Illinois Institute of Technology's Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering program. Graham founded IIT's Women in Science and Engineering program, which recruited female high school students into science and engineering careers.
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Nathalie de Vries
#20636
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Nathalie de Vries is a Dutch architect, lecturer and urbanist. In 1993 together with Winy Maas and Jacob van Rijs she set up MVRDV. MVRDV In 1993, together with Winy Maas and Jacob van Rijs, she founded the MVRDV studio , which produces designs and studies in the fields of architecture, urban studies and landscape design.
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Leila Araghian
#16470
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Leila Araghian is an Iranian architect. She has a master's degree in architecture from the University of British Columbia, where she won the UBC Architecture Alumni Henry Elder Prize. She previously studied architecture in Iran, at Shahid Beheshti University.
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Annie Leibovitz
#409
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Anna-Lou Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer best known for her engaging portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. Leibovitz's Polaroid photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, taken five hours before Lennon's murder, is considered one of Rolling Stone magazine's most famous cover photographs. The Library of Congress declared her a Living Legend, and she is the first woman to have a feature exhibition at Washington's National Portrait Gallery.
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Michelle Khine
#33605
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Michelle Khine is an American bioengineer who is a distinguished scientist and innovator at the University of California, Irvine, co-founder of Fluxion Biosciences Inc., the scientific founder of the Shrink nano-technology platform, as well as the Assistant and Founding Professor of the School of Engineering at UC Merced. Khine, an associate biomedical engineering professor in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering, is responsible for experimenting with childhood toys Shrinky Dinks to build microfluidic channels. Her research has enabled technological advances in industries including biologic...
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Gwendolyn Boyd
#21289
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Boyd is an American scientist and university administrator. She served as president of Alabama State University from 2014 to 2016, and was previously national president of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority from 2000 to 2004. Before entering administration she worked as a mechanical engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
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