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 Philosophy,
#2151
Anne Carlisle
#144202
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Anne Carlisle is a British educator. She attended Ballyclare High School from 1974–1976. She studied a Diploma in Foundation Art & Design at the University Polytechnic, Belfast . Further to this, Professor Carlisle graduated with a First Class Honours in Fine Art from the University of Ulster, Belfast and went on to complete a Masters at the University of Arts, London in 1981.
Go to Profile#2152
Melahat Okuyan
#85940
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (99 years)
Melahat Okuyan is a Turkish female veterinary physician, academic and scientist in microbiology. She is an AIDS activist. Personal life Melahat Okuyan was born in Diyarbakır, southeastern Turkey in 1926. She was schooled at the age of five and half. She married and has two children, a son and a daughter.
Go to Profile#2153
Asma El Dareer
#38855
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Asma Abdel Rahim El Dareer is a Sudanese physician known for her research in the 1980s into female genital mutilation. She was one of the first Arab women and feminist doctors to speak out publicly against the practice.
Go to Profile#2154
LJ Punch
#182518
Overall Influence
LJ Punch is an American critical care surgeon, an associate professor of surgery, and a scholar within the Institute for Public Health at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. Punch is also an activist in the fight against gun violence and directs StopTheBleedSTL, located at "The T" anti-violence center in St. Louis, which runs programs to educate the community on how to reduce the impact of trauma, injury, and violence in St. Louis. As a physician, educator, and activist, Punch aims to propagate the idea of “Radical Generosity” as means to better his community and t...
Go to Profile#2155
Anna Czekanowska-Kuklińska
#191994
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Anna Czekanowska-Kuklińska – Polish musicologist and ethnographer, professor at the University of Warsaw, daughter of anthropologist Jan Czekanowski. She applied statistical-mathematical methods for analysis of folk music.
Go to Profile#2156
Srinivas Gada
#183677
Overall Influence
Srinivas Gada is an Oxford-based doctor, lecturer and academic. His work revolves around autism/ASD in children, Dyspraxia, Developmental Delay, Learning Disability, Emotional & Behavioural Disorders and Cerebral Palsy. Dr Gada has been teaching at University of Oxford. Dr Sri Gada is an Hon Senior Lecturer since 2007.
Go to Profile#2157
Merceline Dahl-Regis
#36862
Overall Influence
Merceline Dahl-Regis, CMG OD, is a Bahamian physician and public health expert. She is the former Chief Medical Officer of the Bahamas and has been recognized for her role in advancing public health in the Caribbean and internationally.
Go to Profile#2158
Vera Lúcia Gomes-Klein
#186324
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Dr. Vera Lúcia Gomes-Klein is a Brazilian botanist and professor at the Federal University of Goiás. She specializes in plant taxonomy, particularly floristics and the classification of spermatophytes. She is manager of the Federal University of Goiás' Conservation Unit, which consists of an herbarium, the August Forest of Saint Hilaire, and the Serra Dourada Biological Reserve. She has described at least five species of melonleaf in the genus Cayaponia.
Go to Profile#2159
Alice MacLennan
#181911
Overall Influence
1901 - 2015 (114 years)
Alice MacLennan, was an Australian physician and researcher. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, she studied medicine at the University of Glasgow and undertook further training in Chicago before moving to Australia, where she established a clinic focusing on menopause. She served as Chair of the Council of Affiliated Menopause Societies from 2005 to 2008, and from 2007 to 2009 was president of the Australasian Menopause Society. She also taught at the University of Adelaide as the Clinical Senior Lecturer in Gynaecology.
Go to Profile#2160
Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen
#181272
Overall Influence
Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen is an American educator and author. She is the founder and president of the Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen Foundation, a private operating foundation that describes itself as a philanthropic "innovation lab", and founded the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund , a venture philanthropy fund. She is also the author of Giving 2.0: Transform Your Giving and Our World.
Go to Profile#2161
Ellen Tise
#175200
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Ellen Remona Tise is a South African librarian, president of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions from 2009 to 2011, under the theme "Libraries Driving Access to Knowledge ". Her work has focused on library associations and the open access promoted from the library sector.
Go to Profile#2162
Gretchen Rehberg
#102538
Overall Influence
Gretchen Mary Rehberg is the ninth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane. Early life and education Rehberg was born in Pullman, Washington on July 7, 1964. Her mother, Margaret Rehberg was a homemaker and her father, Wallace Rehberg, was a professor at Washington State University. The family had a small farm outside of town. After graduating from Pullman High School in 1982, Rehberg attended Sewanee: The University of the South.
Go to Profile#2163
Eva Isaksson
#175906
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Eva Isaksson is a Finnish librarian and non-fiction writer, with interests in astronomy and feminism. She was employed at the Helsinki University Observatory from 1981 and became a tenured astronomy librarian in 1998. In 2010, she transferred with the merger of the physics and astronomy departments to the Kumpula Science Library, on the Kumpula Campus. Isaksson and has been involved with the Finnish LGBT and pacifist movements since the 1970s. She produced the Lesbian Information Secretariat Newsletter for the International Lesbian Information Service from 1981 to 1983 and in the 1990s, began to create on-line platforms for lesbians to network.
Go to Profile#2164
Oksana Bulgakowa
#115657
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Oksana Bulgakowa is a professor of film history and film analysis at the University of Mainz. Career Born in Nikopol, Soviet Union, Bulgakowa completed in 1977 a five-year study of film theory and history at Allunionsinstitut of Cinematography in Moscow, and then followed her husband Dietmar Hochmuth in the DDR where a Szenaristenlehrgang at the graduated Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg.
Go to Profile#2165
Margaret Trask
#178527
Overall Influence
1928 - 2002 (74 years)
Margaret Trask was an Australian librarian and educator, as well as Deputy Chancellor of the University of Technology Sydney . She is considered to be a pioneer in the area of information sciences in Australasia.
Go to Profile#2166
Dorothy Fratt
#168036
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Dorothy Fratt - Cooper was an American artist. A native of Washington, D.C., Fratt was the daughter of a photographer and journalist on the staff of The Washington Post. She received scholarships to the Mount Vernon College for Women, the Corcoran School of Art, and the art school at The Phillips Collection, and she studied painting with Karl Knaths and Nikolai Cikovsky. Her first solo exhibition came in 1946, at the Washington City Library, and she has since shown work in numerous solo and group exhibitions. From 1946 to 1951 Fratt taught at Mount Vernon College for Women; in 1958 she settled in Phoenix, Arizona, and began teaching color theory and painting privately.
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Constance L. Mui
#100432
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
#2168
Grace Ebun Delano
#104766
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
Grace Ebun Delano is a nurse and midwife who has played a key role in pioneering family planning and reproductive health services in Nigeria. She co-founded the Association for Reproductive and Family Health of which she was director for many years, has acted as consultant for many different organisations across Africa, and has written and co-authored numerous books and articles on women's health and related topics. In 1993, she was given the World Health Organization Sasakawa Award for her work in health development.
Go to Profile#2169
Nancy Wilson
#56336
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Nancy L. Wilson is an American cleric who served as the moderator of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. Under Wilson's leadership, the denomination became known as "The Human Rights Church" in many parts of the world for its commitment to same-sex marriage, employment and housing non-discrimination laws.
Go to Profile#2170
Janet Sawicki
#102869
Overall Influence
Janet Sawicki is an American cancer researcher, and professor emeritus and former deputy director of the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research. Her research is focused on the preclinical development of treatments for cancers using DNA and siRNA.
Go to Profile#2171
Anne Ormisson
#180217
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Anne Ormisson is an Estonian medical researcher and pediatrician. Biography Anne Tampere was born on 19 November 1942 in Tartu, Estonia and is the second child of a four-child family of Vanemuine orchestra player Arnold and a music school teacher Helene. She graduated school in 1961 from Tartu 7th Secondary School. She graduated University of Tartu in 1967 and was sent to Võru hospital as a paediatrician. She later moved to Viljandi where she met and married Toivo Ormisson, and her daughter Liis and a son Niil were born. In 1971, she started working as a researcher at the Department of Pediat...
Go to Profile#2172
Linda Maria Koldau
#47629
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (54 years)
Linda Maria Koldau is a German musicologist and was Chair of Musicology and Cultural History at Aarhus University in Denmark. Since 2013 she has been director of the Coastal Academy in Northern Germany, focusing on efficiency, conciseness and perfection in business language and communication.
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Jennifer Grandis
#165961
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Jennifer Rubin Grandis is an American otolaryngologist, focusing in general otolaryngology and clinical and translational research. Her research interests include diagnosis and treatment of head and neck cancer. She is a Full professor at the University of California, San Francisco having previously worked as the UPMC Endowed Chair at University of Pittsburgh.
Go to Profile#2174
Linda Kouvaras
#191979
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Linda Kouvaras is a Melbourne-based composer with a background in punk and new wave. Her compositions, which explore genre mixing, are focused on vocals and piano music, and are released on ABC Records and Move Records.
Go to Profile#2175
Xin Lu
#37789
Overall Influence
Xin Lu is a Professor of Cancer Biology and Director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Oxford. She is known for her discovery of and research on the ASPP family of proteins.
Go to Profile#2176
Esther Tumama Cowley-Malcolm
#97491
Overall Influence
Esther Tumama Cowley-Malcolm is a Samoan-New Zealand health researcher and practitioner. Cowley-Malcolm completed a Masters degree at Auckland University of Technology in 2005. Her masters thesis was titled Some Samoans' perceptions, values and beliefs on the role of parents and children within the context of aiga/family and the influence of fa'asamoa and the church on Samoan parenting. She did her PhD in Pacific Cultural Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington, she was the first women graduate of the Pacific studies programme. Her doctoral thesis was titled Perceptions of Samoan Pare...
Go to Profile#2177
Ann Van Gysel
#186544
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Ann Van Gysel is a Belgian scientist and businesswoman. In 2011 she started Turnstone Communications, offering communications and business development services to biotech and pharma industry. She teaches science communications at the University of Antwerp and University of Ghent and is a director to the board of the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp.
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Victoria Sendón de León
#190413
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Victoria Sendón de León is a Spanish philosopher, feminist and writer. A difference feminist, Sendón de León has criticized equality feminism’s emphasis on rationality and ideals of equality:
Go to Profile#2179
Claudia Lux
#146324
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Claudia Lux is German librarian and the Member of the National Committee of International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. Life and education After studying social sciences, Lux received her Ph.D. in sinology in 1985 at Ruhr University Bochum. She started to work as a sinologist at the State Library.
Go to Profile#2180
Annie Goldson
#92729
Overall Influence
Anne Veronica Goldson is a New Zealand journalism and film academic specialising in documentaries. Her films include Punitive Damage, Georgie Girl, Brother Number One and Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web.
Go to Profile#2181
Michelle Bholat
#182617
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Michelle Bholat is an American physician. She is an associate professor of family medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she serves as vice-chair of clinical affairs and is a member of the Medical Board of California.
Go to Profile#2182
Qiao Jie
#58092
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Qiao Jie is a Chinese obstetrician, reproductive physician and biologist. She is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and currently president of Peking University Third Hospital. She is also director of the National Clinical Research Center on Obstetrics & Gynecology, president of China Women Doctors' Association and chair for the Reproductive Medical Society of Chinese Medical Doctor Association.
Go to Profile#2183
Lisa Robinson
#182567
Overall Influence
Lisa Robinson is a clinician-scientist. She is a University of Toronto professor in the Department of Paediatrics and the Vice Dean Strategy and Operations at the Faculty of Medicine, former Head of the Division of Nephrology at The Hospital for Sick Children, a Senior Scientist at the SickKids Research Institute, and the first-ever Chief Diversity officer for the Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#2184
Leslie Jacobson
#185125
Overall Influence
Leslie Bravman Jacobson is a George Washington University professor emeritus of theatre, playwright, director, and the founding artistic director of the longest-running women's theatre in the United States, Horizons: Theatre from a Woman's Perspective in Washington, D.C. She was also a founder and vice president of the 501 not-for-profit Bokamoso Youth Foundation, president of the League of Washington Theatres, and recipient of a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship.
Go to Profile#2185
Jaana Toivari-Viitala
#155744
Overall Influence
1964 - 2017 (53 years)
Jaana Toivari-Viitala was an egyptologist and museum curator from Finland, who was Chair of the Finnish Egyptology Society and Head of the Department of Egyptology at the University of Helsinki. Biography Toivari-Viitala was born in Loviisa on 16 May 1964. She was passionate about Ancient Egypt since her childhood. She studied for her PhD at the Leiden University, which explored the lives of the women who lived at Deir el-Medîna, the village where the builders of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived. This work examined many aspects of women's lives there, including sex, maternity and property ownership.
Go to Profile#2186
Genevieve Lee
#191176
Overall Influence
Genevieve Feiwen Lee is an American pianist and musicologist. She is the Everett S. Olive Professor of Music at Pomona College in Claremont, California. Early life and education Lee attended the Peabody Conservatory of Music and École Normale de Musique de Paris before completing her doctorate in musical arts at Yale University.
Go to Profile#2187
Netha Hussain
#157947
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (35 years)
Netha Hussain is an India-born medical doctor and Wikipedian known for her efforts to tackle the spread of misinformation in Wikipedia about the origin of the coronavirus. Biography Hussain was born on 11 June 1990 in Kunnamangalam in the state of Kerala.
Go to Profile#2188
Lisa Warrington
#129271
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (73 years)
Lisa Jadwiga Valentina Warrington is a New Zealand theatre studies academic, director, actor and author. She has directed more than 130 productions, and established the Theatre Aotearoa database. In 2014 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Dunedin Theatre Awards, and was three times winner of a New Zealand Listener Best Director award, including one for Tom Scott's The Daylight Atheist.
Go to Profile#2189
Rita McAllister
#178827
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Margaret 'Rita' McAllister is a Scottish musicologist, composer and academic. She is the Director of Music at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and is a renowned authority on the works of Sergei Prokofiev.
Go to Profile#2190
Cecilia Castaño
#139335
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Cecilia Castaño Collado is a PhD in Political Science, professor of Applied Economics, and lecturer at the Complutense University of Madrid's Department of Applied Economics. She is an expert in information technology and its effect on women's employment and work. She has conducted numerous investigations on the digital gender gap and women's access to the information society. In 2006 she created the Research Program on Gender and the Information Society of the Open University of Catalonia . She has been a visiting researcher at Harvard University, MIT, and UC Berkeley.
Go to Profile#2191
Astrid Söderbergh Widding
#167282
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (62 years)
Astrid Naemi Söderbergh Widding is a Swedish film studies scholar. She is Professor of film studies and Rector of Stockholm University since 2013. Söderbergh Widding is a board member of the Swedish Film Institute, a former President of the board of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, and a columnist in the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. She earned her PhD in 1992 at Stockholm University with a dissertation on Andrei Tarkovsky. She was elected as a Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2014 and became a Knight of the French Legion of Honour in 2015.
Go to Profile#2192
Anna Suk-Fong Lok
#74923
Overall Influence
Anna Suk-Fong Lok is a gastroenterologist who studied in Hong Kong and moved to the United States in 1992. She is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and helped the World Health Organization and American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases develop guidelines for medical professionals and recommendations for the general public on who should be treated and how treatments should be administered to persons with hepatitis B infections.
Go to Profile#2193
Carolyn Sue
#88913
Overall Influence
Carolyn Mary Sue is an Australian physician-scientist, professor and research director. She has been the Executive Director of the Kolling Institute of Medical Research since 2019 and is also Director of Neurogenetics at Royal North Shore Hospital, Director of the Centre of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders, and Director of the National Centre for Adult Stem Cell Research . Sue specialises in complex neurogenetic conditions and runs tertiary referral clinics for patients with diseases such as Parkinson's, mitochondrial diseases, and other inherited movement disorders. ...
Go to Profile#2194
Fay Biles
#104571
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (98 years)
Fay Biles was an American academic and college sports coach. She was the first woman to serve in a vice presidency role at an Ohio university. As a head coach of the field hockey and lacrosse teams, she logged more victories than any other coach in Kent State University history. She was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1986.
Go to Profile#2195
Marcia J. Bates
#99841
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Marcia J. Bates is Professor VI Emerita of Information Studies in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Career Bates received a M.L.S in 1967 and a Ph.D , both from the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#2196
Ruth McNair
#136340
Overall Influence
Ruth McNair has been a driving force behind the improvement of lesbian and bisexual women's health and wellbeing in Australia. Education Ruth McNair obtained diplomas of obstetrics and gynaecology, and anaesthetics in the UK, and has a Fellowship from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. She completed a PhD in lesbian and bisexual women's health in 2009.
Go to Profile#2197
Elisabeth Niggemann
#55738
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Elisabeth Niggemann is a German librarian specializing in the digitization of cultural heritage resources. From 1999 to 2019, she served as the Director General of the German National Library. Education and career Elisabeth Niggemann was born in Dortmund on April 2, 1954. In college she studied biology and English, receiving a Ph.D. in biology from Ruhr University Bochum.
Go to Profile#2198
Angela Annabell
#189239
Overall Influence
1929 - 2000 (71 years)
Angela Ruth Annabell was a New Zealand musicologist. She researched and wrote largely about folk music. Biography Annabell completed a master's degree in music at the University of Auckland in 1968. Her 1975 doctoral thesis, titled New Zealand Cultural and Economic Development Reflected in Song, is considered the most thorough discussion of New Zealand folk music and song.
Go to Profile#2199
Jennie Lea Knight
#173887
Overall Influence
1933 - 2007 (74 years)
Jennie Lea Knight was an American sculptor. Early life and education Knight was a native of Washington, D.C., and received her artistic training in that city, beginning her studies with classes in design and music at the King-Smith School of Creative Arts.
Go to Profile#2200
Karen Bryan
#90026
Overall Influence
Karen Bryan OBE FRCSLT, is a speech therapist, and Vice Chancellor of York St John University since April 2020. Prior to this, Bryan was Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Greenwich. Career Bryan qualified as a speech and language therapist from the University of Newcastle and also gained her PhD there. Her research interests are in workforce development and the effectiveness of interventions for communication disorders associated with stroke, dementia and other neurological conditions.
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