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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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Physics,

#751

Laura Na Liu

#95949

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Laura Na Liu is a Chinese physicist focused on researching nano-optics of three-dimensional meta materials as it applies to biology and chemistry. After receiving her undergraduate and master's degree in China, she has had many global opportunities for education and research including Germany and the United States of America. Today, she is a professor at University of Stuttgart in Germany. She has received several awards for her contributions in the field of optics.

#752

Kandice Tanner

#79379

Overall Influence

Kandice Tanner is a Trinidad and Tobago biophysicist researching the metastatic traits that allow tumor cells to colonize secondary organs. She is a Senior Investigator at the National Cancer Institute, where she is head of the Tissue morphodynamics section.

#753

Ann McDermott

#91918

Overall Influence

Ann E. McDermott is an American biophysicist who uses nuclear magnetic resonance to study the structure, function, and dynamics of proteins in native-like environments. She is currently the Esther Breslow Professor of Biological Chemistry and Chair of the Educational Policy and Planning Committee of the Arts and Sciences at Columbia University. She has also previously served as Columbia's Associate Vice President for Academic Advising and Science Initiatives in the Arts and Sciences. She is an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences...

#754

Leslie Kolodziejski

#93657

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Leslie Ann Kolodziejski is an American professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She works on fabricating novel photonic devices after synthesizing the constituent material via molecular-beam epitaxy. She is a recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation and is a fellow of The Optical Society.

#755

Emilia Kilpua

#74715

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Emilia Kilpua is a Finnish space scientist. She is currently Professor of Space Physics at the University of Helsinki. Background and career Kilpua was born and raised in Oulu, northern Finland, where auroras are commonplace in winter. She studied theoretical physics and mathematics at the University of Helsinki, followed by a Master's degree and PhD, with a thesis titled Interplanetary shocks, magnetic clouds and magnetospheric storms, which she completed in 2005. She undertook a postdoctoral research associate post in the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley. She moved back to Finland i...

#756

Susanne Yelin

#145774

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Susanne F. Yelin is a German physicist specializing in theoretical quantum optics and known for her work in quantum coherence and superradiance. She is a professor of physics at the University of Connecticut, a professor of physics in residence at Harvard University, and vice director of the Max Planck/Harvard Research Center for Quantum Optics.

#757

Karin Dahmen

#117645

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Karin Andrea Sabine Dahmen is a German condensed matter physicist whose research interests include non-equilibrium thermodynamics, critical phenomena, crackling noise, pattern formation, and quenched disorder, with wide applications of these topics to phenomena such as earthquakes, avalanches, variable stars, and population dynamics. She is a professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

#758

Judith Pipher

#90786

Overall Influence

1940 - 2022 (82 years)

Judith Lynn Pipher was a Canadian-born American astrophysicist and observational astronomer. She was Professor Emerita of Astronomy at the University of Rochester and directed the C. E. K. Mees Observatory from 1979 to 1994. She made important contributions to the development of infrared detector arrays in space telescopes.

#759

Etana Padan

#151000

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

#760

Stephanie Wehner

#70423

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Stephanie Dorothea Christine Wehner is a German physicist and computer scientist. She is the Roadmap Leader of the Quantum Internet and Networked Computing initiative at QuTech, Delft University of Technology. She is also known for introducing the noisy-storage model in quantum cryptography. Wehner's research focuses mainly on quantum cryptography and quantum communications.

#761

Anne Juel

#108307

Overall Influence

Anne Juel is a physicist and academic who is currently Professor of Fluid Dynamics in the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Manchester. Juel is known for her research on fluid mechanics, the dynamics of surfaces in fluids, instability in fluid dynamics, viscous fingering, and convection. She has also studied the way ribbons curl when a scissor blade is run along them. At the University of Manchester, she directs the Manchester Centre for Nonlinear Dynamics.

#762

Paola Cappellaro

#89047

Overall Influence

Paola Cappellaro is an Italian-American engineer who is a Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research considers electron-spin resonance, nuclear magnetic resonance and quantum information processing. She leads the MIT Quantum Engineering Group at the Center for Ultracold Atoms.

#763

Misty C. Bentz

#140612

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Misty C. Bentz is an American astrophysicist and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University. She is best known for her work on supermassive black hole mass measurements and black hole scaling relationships.

#764

Katharine Reeves

#112091

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Katharine Reeves is an astronomer and solar physicist who works at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian .. She is known for her work on high temperature plasmas in the solar corona, and measurement/analysis techniques to probe the physics of magnetic reconnection and thermal energy transport during solar flares; these are aspects of the coronal heating problem that organizes a large part of the field. She has a strong scientific role in multiple NASA and international space missions to observe the Sun: Hinode ; IRIS ; SDO; Parker Solar Probe; and suborbital sounding rockets inc...

#765

Silvana Cardoso

#59279

Overall Influence

Silvana Cardoso is a Portuguese fluid dynamicist working in Britain. She is professor of Fluid Mechanics and the Environment at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. She leads the Fluids and the Environment research group at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology.

#766

Virpi Niemelä

#123143

Overall Influence

1936 - 2006 (70 years)

Virpi Sinikka Niemelä was a leading Finnish Argentine astronomer. She was the second Argentine to be elected for Associate of the Royal Astronomical Society. Born in Finland, she emigrated with her family to Argentina in 1954 where she lived for the majority of her life. She became a citizen, married and had two sons.

#767

Maria Antonietta Loi

#119669

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Maria Antonietta Loi is an Italian physicist who is a Professor of Optoelectronics at the University of Groningen and member of the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials. Her research considers the development of functional materials for low-cost, high efficiency optoelectronic device. She was awarded the 2018 Netherlands Physical Society Physics prize . In 2020, she was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2022 she became a fellow of the Dutch academy of science and of the European academy of Science . Loi is Deputy Editor-in-chief of Applied Physics Letters.

#768

Herta Regina Leng

Herta Regina Leng

#64361

Overall Influence

1903 - 1997 (94 years)

Herta Regina Leng was an Austrian-American physicist and educator. Leng was born on 24 February 1903 in Vienna, Austria. She was the daughter of Arthur Leng and Paula Leng, and sister of Leopold Ignaz Leng. Leng fled Austria in 1939 and eventually emigrated to the United States in 1940. She died on 17 July 1997 in Troy, New York.

#769

Maria V. Chekhova

#112320

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Maria V. Chekhova is a Russian-German physicist known for her research on quantum optics and in particular on the quantum entanglement of pairs of photons. She is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany, where she heads an independent research group on quantum radiation, and a professor at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, in the chair of experimental physics .

#770

Cindy Regal

#109294

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Cindy A. Regal is an American experimental physicist most noted for her work in quantum optics; atomic, molecular, and optical physics ; and cavity optomechanics. Regal is an associate professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado and JILA Fellow; and a Fellow of the American Physical Society .

#771

Lisa Dyson

#91690

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Lisa Dyson is an American scientist, physicist, and entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of Kiverdi, a biotechnology company that uses carbon transformation technologies to develop sustainable products for commercial applications, including agriculture, plastics, and biodegradable materials. She is also the founder and CEO of Air Protein, a spin-off company from Kiverdi, which seeks to produce sustainable meat alternatives from elements found in air.

#772

Nguyen TK Thanh

#45712

Overall Influence

Nguyễn Thị Kim Thanh is a professor of Nanomaterials at University College London. She was awarded the 2019 Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her research and efforts toward gender equality.

#773

Martha Locke Hazen

#109440

Overall Influence

1931 - 2006 (75 years)

Martha Locke Hazen was an American astronomer, best known for her contributions as curator of the Harvard astronomical photographs collection and her work on variable stars. Early life and education Martha Locke Hazen was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and grew up in Belmont. In 1953, she graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in astronomy. She went on to complete her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1958. Her thesis foscused on how the intensities of elliptical galaxies within the Virgo cluster were distributed.

#774

Amy Berrington de González

#38959

Overall Influence

Amy Berrington de González is a scientist. She is a senior investigator and radiation epidemiology branch chief at the National Cancer Institute. Education Berrington de González received a D.Phil. in Cancer Epidemiology from the University of Oxford. Her 2001 dissertation was titled Epidemiological evidence for the risk of cancer from diagnostic X-rays. Her university supervisors were Sarah Darby and David Cox.

#775

Orit Peleg

#62970

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Orit Peleg is an Israeli computer scientist, biophysicist and Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department and the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder in Boulder, CO. She is also an External Professor of the Santa Fe Institute. She is known for her work on collective behavior of insects and the biophysics of soft living systems, including honeybees and fireflies. Applications of her work range from human communication, smart-material design, and swarm robotics. She has won national and international awards and prizes, including a Sloan Research Fellowship in...

#776

Monica Oliphant

Monica Oliphant

#114058

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Monica Viviene Oliphant is a British–Australian research scientist, specialising in solar energy. Career Oliphant began her scientific career with a master's degree in physics from the University of London and worked for almost 20 years as an energy research scientist for the Electricity Trust of South Australia, but since 2000 has been an independent consultant specialising in residential energy efficiency and renewable energy. Oliphant attributes her interest in solar energy from hearing Sir Macfarlane Burnet in the 1970s claiming that "if we used solar energy we would not need to fight over oil" – this sparked a career of over 40 years in the renewable energy industry.

#777

Mary Beth Stearns

#152331

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (99 years)

Mary Beth Stearns was an American solid-state physicist known for her work on magnetism. Early life and career Mary Beth Gorman was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on February 5, 1925. She graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1946. She completed a Ph.D. in nuclear physics in 1952 at Cornell University.

#778

Alexandra Gade

#149292

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Alexandra Gade is a nuclear physicist who studies the nuclear structure of heavy elements, exotic nuclei, and rare isotopes, using techniques including nuclear spectroscopy, nucleon knockoutss, and Coulomb excitation. Educated in Germany, she works at Michigan State University in the US as a professor of physics in the department of physics and astronomy and as deputy scientific director of the facility for rare isotope beams.

#779

Nabila Aghanim

#126073

Overall Influence

Nabila Aghanim is an Algerian observational cosmologist whose research concerns the interpretation of the cosmic microwave background and the light it sheds on galaxy formation and evolution, and the structure of galaxy filaments and the warm–hot intergalactic medium. She works in France as a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research , associated with the Institut d'astrophysique spatiale at the University of Paris-Saclay.

#780

Eline Tolstoy

#134434

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Eline Tolstoy is a Dutch astronomer. Life and education Tolstoy grew up in Scotland and gained a BSc from the University of Edinburgh in 1988. She studied at Leiden University and then in 1995, she received her doctorate from the University of Groningen, under the supervision of A. Saha, Piet van der Kruit and Harvey Butcher. The title of her thesis was `Modeling the resolved stellar populations of nearby dwarf galaxies'.

#781

Elisa Quintana

#115630

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Elisa Victoria Quintana is a scientist working in the field of astronomy and planetary science at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Her research focuses the detection and characterization of exoplanets in addition to studying how they form. She is best known for the detection of Kepler 186f, the first Earth-sized planet found in the habitable zone of a star other than the Sun.

#782

Asimina Arvanitaki

#139323

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Asimina Arvanitaki is a Greek theoretical physicist and Stavros Niarchos Foundation Aristarchus Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. In 2017, she was awarded the New Horizons in Physics prize.

#783

Lucy Mensing

#97188

Overall Influence

1901 - 1995 (94 years)

Lucy Mensing , later Mensing-Schütz or Schütz, was a German physicist and a pioneer of quantum mechanics. Scientific career Mensing studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the University of Hamburg. During her studies she specialized in theoretical physics. In 1923/24 she wrote a thesis in which she applied the older quantum hypothesis based on Bohr-Sommerfeld's theory, which assumes electron trajectories, to diatomic molecules. This work was published in the Zeitschrift für Physik in 1925. In 1925 she received her doctorate under Wilhelm Lenz with a thesis on the influence of electric ...

#784

Zdeňka Vávrová

#78477

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Zdeňka Vávrová is a Czech astronomer. She co-discovered periodic comet 134P/Kowal-Vávrová. She had observed it as an asteroid, which received the provisional designation 1983 JG, without seeing any cometary coma. However, later images by Charles T. Kowal showed a coma. The Minor Planet Center credits her with the discovery of 115 numbered minor planets.

#785

Francisca Nneka Okeke

#72645

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Francisca Nneka Okeke is a Nigerian physicist. She is a Professor of Physics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and first female head of a department in the University. Biography She hails from Idemili North in Anambra State. She earned a Bachelors of Science in Physics , a Masters of Science in science education , a Masters of Science in Applied Earth Geophysics , and a Ph.D. in Ionospheric Geophysics , from the University of Nigeria. She carried out her postdoctoral work at the University of Tokyo, Japan.

#786

Hélène Bouchiat

#106995

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Hélène Bouchiat is a French condensed matter physicist specializing in mesoscopic physics and nanoscience. She is a director of research in the French National Centre for Scientific Research , associated with the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides at Paris-Sud University. Topics in her research include supercurrents, persistent currents, graphene, carbon nanotubes, and bismuth-based topological insulators.

#787

Almudena Arcones

#148975

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Almudena Arcones Segovia is a Spanish-German nuclear astrophysicist whose research topics have included the creation and decay of heavy elements through the r-process, and neutrino-driven outflows, in energetic stellar events including supernovae and neutron star mergers. She is a professor of theoretical astrophysics at Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany, and a researcher in the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt.

#788

Rachel Oliver

#105160

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Rachel Angharad Oliver is a Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. She works on characterisation techniques for gallium nitride materials for dark-emitting diodes and laser diodes.

#789

Mirjana Pović

#123197

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Mirjana Pović is a Serbian astrophysicist who works on galaxy formation and evolution at the Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute. She was the inaugural laureate of the Nature - Estée Lauder Inspiring Science Award.

#790

Faïrouz Malek

#128114

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Faïrouz Malek also known as Faïrouz Ohlsson-Malek is a French and Algerian physicist specializing in nuclear physics, particle physics and cosmology. A research scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, she is involved in international research at the CERN LHC. She has contributed to the discovery of the Higgs boson. She is also known for her commitment to gender parity in science, as well as to the development of science in Africa. She is fellow of the African Academy of Sciences. She is the niece of Algerian composer Ahmed Malek.

#791

Catherine Stampfl

#135418

Overall Influence

Catherine Stampfl is a Professor of Physics at the University of Sydney and was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2019. Career Stampfl received a PhD in physics from La Trobe University in 1990. She then moved to the United States where she worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Germany. Before her return to Australia in 2003 she worked at Northwestern University. she then settled down in Sydney and had two children named Eva and Elke.

#792

Bulbul Chakraborty

#122742

Overall Influence

Bulbul Chakraborty is the Enid and Nate Ancell Professor of Physics at Brandeis University. She is recognized for her contributions to soft condensed matter theory studying systems far from equilibrium, such as granular materials, amorphous systems, and statistical physics. She is an elected American Physical Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow.

#793

Judith Klein-Seetharaman

#116442

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Judith Klein-Seetharaman is an American-German biochemist who is a professor at the Arizona State University. Her research considers the structure-function properties of proteins using computational bio-linguistics. She was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to identify novel therapies to tackle HIV.

#794

Suzanne Madden

#154065

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Suzanne Madden is an American astronomer who works as a researcher at the Saclay Nuclear Research Centre in Paris, France. The American Astronomical Society honored her work by awarding her the Annie J. Cannon Prize in 1995.

#795

Ravit Helled

#141376

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Ravit Helled is a planetary scientist and a professor in the department of astrophysics and cosmology at the University of Zürich. She studies gas giant planets in the Solar System and exoplanets. She is a member of the science team of Juno, a NASA probe to study the planet Jupiter. In 2015, she accurately calculated Saturn's rotational period together with Eli Galanti and Yohai Kaspi of the Weizmann Institute of Science. In 2015, selected among the 50 most influential women of Forbes Israel.

#796

Mairi Sakellariadou

#154715

Overall Influence

#797

Merav Opher

#127156

Overall Influence

Merav Opher is a professor of astronomy at Boston University known for her work on the heliosphere, the cocoon formed by the wind emanated from the Sun as it travels in the Galaxy. In 2021 she was named a William Bentinck-Smith Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

#798

Isabelle Sagnes

#154965

Overall Influence

#799

Karin Jacobs

#96584

Overall Influence

Karin Jacobs is a German physicist specializing in micro-fluidics and adhesion at micro- and nanometer scales. She is a professor at the Saarland University. Life and career Jacobs was born in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and completed her Abitur at in 1986. She then went on to study physics at the University of Konstanz, where she also received her doctorate in 1997. After completing her doctorate, Jacobs went on to perform postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces. She subsequently became a research assistant in the Department of Applied Physics at the University of Ulm, after which she worked as a project manager at Bayer in their polymers division.

#800

Debra R. Rolison

#118042

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Debra R. Rolison is a physical chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory, where she is a head of the Advanced Electrochemical Materials section. Rolison's research involves the design, synthesis, and characterization of multi-functional nanostructures and ultra porous materials for rate-critical applications such as catalysis and energy storage. She is the 112th recipient of the William H. Nichols Medal Award.

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