Search People Result | Academic Influence

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).

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List of the most influential female people in Physics,

#701

Leah Buechley

#74045

Overall Influence

Leah Buechley is an American educator, engineer and designer who is best known as the developer of the LilyPad Arduino toolkit and other smart textiles. Buechley is currently serving as an Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico's Department of Computer Science. Her research focuses on the intersection of computer science, art, architecture, and education in her work. She has done fundamental work in electronics based on paper and fabric.

#702

Sara Solla

#37312

Overall Influence

Sara A. Solla is an Argentine-American physicist and neuroscientist whose research applies ideas from statistical mechanics to problems involving neural networks, machine learning, and neuroscience. She is a professor of physics and of physiology at Northwestern University.

#703

Marilyn E. Jacox

Marilyn E. Jacox

#39468

Overall Influence

1929 - 2013 (84 years)

Marilyn Esther Jacox was an American physical chemist. She was a National Institute of Standards and Technology Fellow and Scientist Emeritus in the Sensor Science Division. Education Jacox was born in Utica, New York, the daughter of Grant and Mary Jacox.

#704

Suzanne Smrekar

#88210

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Suzanne E. Smrekar is an American geophysicist and Deputy Principal Investigator for the Mars InSight lander and the principal investigator for the planned VERITAS space probe to Venus. Background Smrekar obtained her B.S. degree in geophysics and mathematics from Brown University in 1984, and her doctorate in geophysics from Southern Methodist University in 1990. She was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT before joining the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1992.

#705

Tara Murphy

#127158

Overall Influence

Prof. Tara Murphy is an Australian Astrophysicist and CAASTRO chief investigator working in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. Murphy led a group that first confirmed radio emissions from the 2017 Neutron Star Merger event which provided evidence for a global scientific announcement in the field of gravitational waves.

#706

Anna Hasenfratz

#122707

Overall Influence

Anna Hasenfratz is a Hungarian-American theoretical high energy physicist whose research involves non-perturbative theories, especially in lattice quantum chromodynamics. She is a professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

#707

Pepi Fabbiano

#144090

Overall Influence

Giuseppina "Pepi" Fabbiano is an American astrophysicist. She works in the High Energy Astrophysics Division, at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Life She was born in Palermo, Italy. She graduated from the University of Palermo. She studies black holes.

#708

Hilda Hänchen

#51678

Overall Influence

1919 - 2013 (94 years)

Hilda Hänchen was a German physicist. Life and work Hilda Hänchen received her doctorate in 1943 from the University of Hamburg under the supervision of Fritz Goos, with a dissertation titled Über das Eindringen des totalreflektierten Lichtes in das dünnere Medium . During World War II she worked as a "managing" research assistant at the State Physics Institute in Hamburg . She concurrently worked at the Physical-Chemical Research Institute in Kiel on war research contracts and was listed in the register of sponsorships of the Reichsforschungsrat . From 1949 to 1951 she was a referee for the chemistry journal Chemisches Zentralblatt.

#709

Susanne Stemmer

#144207

Overall Influence

#710

Zaira Ollano

#117036

Overall Influence

1904 - 1997 (93 years)

Zaira Ollano was an Italian physicist, researcher and professor. She investigated physics and nuclear physics, including the radiation absorption properties of beryllium. Life and work Ollano was born in Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, Italy, on 4 March 1904, to Francesco and Felicina Statzu .

#711

Helen Guillette Vassallo

#37202

Overall Influence

Helen Guillette Vassallo is an American scientific researcher, educator, author, lecturer, and business leader noted for her contributions to the fields of physiology, pharmacology, and anesthesia. Education In 1949, Vassallo graduated as the valedictorian from Attleboro High School in Massachusetts. While in high school, she won Honorable Mention in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. She went on to Tufts University to earn a Bachelor of Science in biology and a Master of Science in pharmacology. In 1967, Vassallo earned her doctorate in physiology from Clark University. A few years late...

#712

Cathy Olkin

#123746

Overall Influence

Cathy Olkin is a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, focusing on the outer Solar System. She is deputy principal investigator for NASA's Lucy mission examining the Trojan asteroids around Jupiter, which launched in 2021 and will fly past its targets between 2025 and 2033.

#713

Susanne Aalto

#102678

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Susanne E. Aalto is a Swedish professor of radio astronomy geodesy at the Onsala Space Observatory in the department of Space, Earth and Environment at Chalmers University of Technology. She has been a professor of radio astronomy since 2013. Between 1994 and 1999, she completed her post doctoral studies at the Steward Observatory, University of Arizona and at Caltech in the United States.

#714

Alyson Brooks

#103868

Overall Influence

Alyson Brooks is an American theoretical astrophysicist and professor at Rutgers University. She uses large-scale simulations to determine how galaxies form. Early life and education Brooks grew up in Minnesota. She was interested in astronomy from a young age, and asked for a telescope as a Christmas gift when she was eight. However, she was discouraged from pursuing a career in science in her teens because of the perception that research would be isolating and unwelcoming to women. She started her undergraduate degree in English in 1996 at Macalester College. After doing well in an astronomy...

#715

Elizabeth Beise

#108552

Overall Influence

Elizabeth J. Beise is a Professor of Physics and Associate Provost at the University of Maryland, College Park. She works on quantum chromodynamics, nucleon structure and fundamental symmetries. Early life and education Beise studied physics at Carleton College, and graduated in 1981. She joined MIT for her graduate research, earning a PhD in 1988. She was awarded the Peter T. Demos Award for the best PhD thesis from the MIT-Bates Accelerator Center. She worked at the California Institute of Technology Kellogg Radiation laboratory as a senior research fellow from 1988 to 1993. Since this fell...

#716

Sarah Stewart Johnson

#106184

Overall Influence

Sarah Stewart Johnson is an American biologist, geochemist, astronomer and planetary scientist. She joined Georgetown University in 2014 and is currently the Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of Biology and the Science, Technology, and International Affairs program in the School of Foreign Service.

#717

Marina Bosi

#83327

Overall Influence

Marina Bosi is a Consulting Professor at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics . Originally a flutist and flute teacher, she is known for her work on digital audio coding formats.

#718

Lisa Jardine-Wright

Lisa Jardine-Wright

#119112

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Lisa Jayne Jardine-Wright is a physicist and educator at the University of Cambridge. She is Director of Isaac Physics, a Department for Education and The Ogden Trust supported Open Platform for Active Learning that supports school students learning physics.

#719

Elizabeth J. Tasker

Elizabeth J. Tasker

#120603

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Elizabeth J. Tasker is a British astrophysicist and science writer. Tasker is currently an Associate Professor at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and is highly active in science communication. Her first book, The Planet Factory, was published by Bloomsbury in 2017.

#720

Helen Mason

#74991

Overall Influence

Helen Elizabeth Mason OBE is a British theoretical physicist at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. She holds a Personal Readership in Solar Physics. Helen Mason has been involved in many solar space projects such as Skylab, Yohkoh and the Solar Maximum Mission. She has been working as a co-investigator of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory project launched in 1995, and more recently on Hinode and the Solar Dynamics Observatory. She is a Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge.

#721

Brittany Kamai

#138110

Overall Influence

Brittany Lehua Kamai is an American astrophysicist and racial justice activist. Kamai is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the California Institute of Technology. She was the founder of #ShutDownSTEM, part of the Strike for Black Lives held on June 10, 2020. A native Hawaiian, Kamai grew up in Honolulu and graduated from President Theodore Roosevelt High School and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She completed her Master of Arts from Fisk University and her PhD from Vanderbilt University. Kamai is only the second native Hawaiian to earn a doctorate in as...

#722

Nicole Capitaine

#107917

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Nicole Capitaine is an astronomer at the Paris Observatory who is known as an expert on astrometry and related standards. Early life and education In 1969, Capitaine received a bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Sciences in Paris in mathematics. In 1970 she graduated with a degree in astronomy from Pierre and Marie Curie University. The same year she joined the Paris Observatory as an assistant. She then held several positions there before becoming an astronomer in charge of research. In 1972, she received a PhD in astronomy at the Pierre and Marie Curie University. In 1982, she wrote h...

#723

Rossella Elisei

#146738

Overall Influence

#724

Lidia van Driel-Gesztelyi

#125360

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Lidia van Driel-Gesztelyi is a Hungarian solar scientist and professor of physics at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory of University College London. She also maintains affiliations with Solar and Stellar Activity Research Team at Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Space Research Laboratory of Paris Observatory. She has been Editor-in-Chief of the journal Solar Physics since 2005 and has served in leadership roles within the International Astronomical Union.

#725

Sarah Rugheimer

#125542

Overall Influence

Sarah Rugheimer is a Swiss-American astrobiologist and astrophysicist at Jesus College, Oxford. Her research focuses on the atmospheric composition of exoplanets, and ways of detecting life. Education Rugheimer earned her bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Calgary. She completed her master's degree and PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Harvard University. Her thesis topic involved studying biomarkers and modelling the atmosphere of exoplanets, using space-based telescopes.

#726

Antoinette Galvin

#109229

Overall Influence

Antoinette Galvin is space physicist at the University of New Hampshire. She is known for her research on the solar wind. Education and career Galvin earned her B.S. in physics from Purdue University, and has an M.S. and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland. Galvin was a research faculty member of the University of Maryland before moving to the University of New Hampshire in 1997. As of 2011, Galvin is a research professor in physics and astronomy at the University of New Hampshire and the director of the New Hampshire NASA Space Grant program and the New Hampshire NASA EPSCoR p...

#727

Dorothy McFadden Hoover

#53829

Overall Influence

1918 - 2000 (82 years)

Dorothy Estheryne McFadden Hoover was an American physicist and mathematician. Hoover was a pioneer in the early days of NASA. Originally one of the first black women hired at Langley as a human computer, Hoover would eventually become a published physicist and mathematician. Hoover is one of the first black women to be listed as a co-author on NASA research publications. Her research supported the development of America's first jet fighter, the Sabre. Hoover's accomplishments were featured in Margot Lee Shetterly's bestselling book, Hidden Figures.

#728

Helen Saibil

#93539

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Helen Ruth Saibil FRS FMedSci is a Canadian-British molecular biologist and Professor of Structural Biology at the Department of Crystallography of Birkbeck, University of London. Her research is largely focuses on molecular chaperones and protein misfolding.

#729

Nidia Morrell

#127016

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Nidia Irene Morrell is an Argentine astronomer who is a permanent staff member at the Las Campanas Observatory in La Serena, Chile. She was a member of the Massive Stars research group led by Virpi Niemelä and the Hubble Heritage Project. Professionally, she is known for her numerous contributions related to the astrophysics of massive stars. She participates in the systematic search for variations of brightness in stellar objects, including the observation of a candidate for the Thorne–Żytkow object. She was also a member of the team that discovered the supernova ASASSN-15lh.

#730

Anna Coble

#81601

Overall Influence

1936 - 2009 (73 years)

Anna Jane Coble-Mullen was an American biophysicist. She was the first black woman to earn a doctorate in biophysics, and the first black woman to be hired at Howard University. Early life and education Coble was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she became interested in mathematics and physics. Her father was a teacher at St. Augustine's University. Coble studied mathematics at Howard University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1958 and a master's degree in 1961. After graduating, she taught physics at North Carolina A&T State University for four years. Coble moved to University of Illin...

#731

Joy Crisp

#74497

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Joy A. Crisp is a planetary geologist specializing in Mars geology. She is noted for her work on NASA missions to Mars, including the Mars Exploration Rovers and Mars Science Laboratory. Early life and education Crisp was born in Colorado Springs, CO. She earned a bachelor's degree in geology from Carleton College in 1979, and both a Master's and a PhD from Princeton University. Subsequently, Crisp was a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA for more than two years. Her studies involved investigating rocks from the Canary Islands under conditions similar to those within volcanoes.

#732

Almudena Alonso-Herrero

#147217

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Almudena Alonso-Herrero is a Spanish astronomer whose research includes the use of infrared astronomy to study star formation and dust emission in Seyfert galaxies and other galaxies with active nuclei. She is a researcher for the Spanish National Research Council, affiliated with the astrophysics department in the Spanish Astrobiology Center of the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial.

#733

Aneta Siemiginowska

#146177

Overall Influence

Aneta Siemiginowska is a Polish-American astrophysicist whose research involves high-energy cosmic objects including supermassive black hole, quasars, blazars, active galaxies, and astrophysical jets. She works at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian as a senior astrophysicist in the Chandra X-ray Center.

#734

Anne Cowley

#117188

Overall Influence

Anne Pyne Cowley is an American astronomer known for her spectroscopic observations of stars and stellar black holes, including the 1983 discovery of a likely black hole in LMC X-3, an X-ray binary star system in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This became the first known extragalactic stellar black hole, and the second known stellar black hole after Cygnus X-1. She is a professor emerita at Arizona State University.

#735

Bodil Jönsson

#94991

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Bodil Agneta Jönsson is a Swedish physicist and author, who is professor emeritus at the Department of Rehabilitation Technology at Lund University since 1993. Between 1999 and 2019, she has authored about 20 books. She received H. M. The King's Medal in the 8th size in 1997, and was awarded a gold medal by the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 2013.

#736

Amanda Cooper-Sarkar

#139546

Overall Influence

Amanda Margaret Cooper-Sarkar is an English particle physicist. She is an expert on deep inelastic scattering and parton distribution functions. Education & Work Cooper-Sarkar received her DPhil in particle physics from the University of Oxford in 1975. After working as an exchange fellow at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India and then at the National Laboratory for High Energy Physics in Tsukuba, Japan, she returned to England as a research associate at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, in 1979. She became a senior fellow at CERN in Geneva in 1983, and...

#737

Talat Rahman

#143204

Overall Influence

Talat Shahnaz Rahman is a Pakistani condensed matter physicist whose research topics include surface phenomena and excited media, including catalysis, vibrational dynamics, and magnetic excitations. She has also helped develop molecules that can "walk" across a solid surface by moving one part of the molecule while keeping another part attached to the surface. She is UCF Pegasus Professor of Physics at the University of Central Florida.

#738

Joanna Sułkowska

#117744

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Joanna Ida Sułkowska is a Polish physicist and chemist who specializes in biophysics and protein molecular biophysics and theory. She is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Chemistry and the Center of New Technologies at the University of Warsaw.

#739

Sylvia Speller

#107161

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Sylvia Speller was born on June 17, 1967, in Haren, Germany. She is a German physicist who obtained her Dr. rer. nat. from the University of Osnabruck and has been a professor in the faculty of mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Rostock since 2012. She teaches and researches experimental physics, specifically, surface and interface physics, nanophysics, and scanning probe methods. Speller is currently a member of the German Physical Society.

#740

Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop

#136834

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop is a professor of physics at the University of Queensland and an Officer of the Order of Australia. She has led pioneering research in atom optics, laser micro-manipulation using optical tweezers, laser enhanced ionisation spectroscopy, biophysics and quantum physics.

#741

Teresa Anderson

#110720

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Teresa Mary Anderson is a British physicist and the director of the University of Manchester's Discovery Centre at Jodrell Bank Observatory. She is a professor at the University of Manchester and the curator of science at the Bluedot Festival.

#742

Haley Gomez

#126202

Overall Influence

Haley Gomez MBE, FRAS, FLSW is a Welsh Professor of Astrophysics at Cardiff University. She studies the formation and evolution of cosmic dust using the Herschel Space Observatory. She is Deputy Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy. She was awarded an Order of the British Empire in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honour’s.

#743

Jennifer Dionne

#89981

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Jennifer Dionne is an American scientist and pioneer of nanophotonics. She is currently senior associate vice provost of research platforms at Stanford University, a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, and an associate professor of materials science and engineering and by courtesy, of radiology. She serves as director of the Department of Energy's "Photonics at Thermodynamic Limits" Energy Frontier Research Center , which strives to create thermodynamic engines driven by light, and she leads the "Extreme Scale Characterization" efforts of the DOE's Q-NEXT Quantum Science Center. She is also an associate editor of the ACS journal Nano Letters.

#744

Nieng Yan

#111823

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

#745

Raffaella Morganti

#148422

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Raffaella Morganti is an Italian astrophysicist and radio astronomer. Her primary research interests are radio observations of active galaxies. She was head of the Astronomy group of ASTRON from 2007-2014 , and is currently a Senior Astronomer at ASTRON. She is also Professor of Astronomy at the University of Groningen's Kapteyn Institute.

#746

Anne Kernan

#66851

Overall Influence

1933 - 2020 (87 years)

Anne Kernan was an Irish particle physicist. Early life and education Kernan was born in 1933 to Annie Connor and Frederick Kernan in Glasnevin. She was the second of four children including Denis, Gerard, and Una. Kernan was educated in the Dominican College on Eccles St, because they had a class in physics. She went on to study physics at University College Dublin graduating with first-class honours in 1952. Kernan was the only woman in the class. After graduation Kernan went on to complete her PhD in physics in her alma mater in 1957. Kernan worked there as a lecturer for four years. She a...

#747

Marianna S. Safronova

#125983

Overall Influence

Marianna S. Safronova is an American scientist involved in theoretical atomic physics. Career Safronova received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Notre Dame in 2001 and joined the National Institute for Standards and Technology in 2001 as a guest researcher. In 2003, she accepted a faculty position at the University of Delaware in the Department of Physics and Astronomy where she is currently a Professor. She is also an Adjunct Fellow at the Joint Quantum Institute, NIST and University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include the study of fundamental symmetries, a...

#748

Susan Coppersmith

#123563

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Susan Nan Coppersmith is an American condensed matter physicist. Formerly the Robert E. Fassnacht Professor of Physics and Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she moved in 2018 to the University of New South Wales.

#749

Fiorenza Donato

#145092

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Fiorenza Donato is an Italian theoretical astroparticle physicist whose research involves the study of cosmic rays and their use in understanding the nature of dark matter, the possible products of particle collisions involving dark matter, the creation and behavior of antimatter among high-energy cosmic particles, and gamma-ray astronomy. She is a full professor of theoretical physics at the University of Turin.

#750

Moira Jardine

#140972

Overall Influence

Moira Mary Jardine is a British astrophysicist with an interest in young stars, particularly the structure of their magnetic fields and coronae, and the mechanisms by which they interact with their disks and planets. She was promoted to a Personal Chair in 2012, making her the first female professor of Physics at the University of St Andrews.

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