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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Physics,

#801

Patricia Whitelock

#148609

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Professor Patricia Ann Whitelock is a British-born astrophysicist with dual British-South African nationality. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa ; a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa; and a member of the South African Institute of Physics , .

#802

Bärbel Koribalski

Bärbel Koribalski

#133332

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Dr. Bärbel Silvia Koribalski is a research scientist working on galaxy formation at CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility , part of CSIRO's Astronomy & Space Science . She obtained her PhD at the University of Bonn in Germany and is noted for studies of nearby galaxies. In 2011 she received CSIRO's Newton Turner Award. She is also a project leader of the ASKAP HI All-Sky Survey, known as WALLABY.

#803

Annick Loiseau

#77162

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Annick Loiseau is a French physicist who is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research Laboratory of Microstructure Studies and Mechanics of Materials. She was the first woman to be appointed to the Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales . Her research considers low-dimensional materials such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, and boron nitride. In 2006 she was awarded the CNRS Silver Medal.

#804

Beate Heinemann

Beate Heinemann

#156513

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Beate Heinemann is a German particle physicist who has held positions at universities in Europe and the United States. She currently holds a joint appointment at two German institutions, Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg and the DESY laboratory in Hamburg.

#805

Susan E. Mullally

#156638

Overall Influence

#806

Ina Tegen

#156904

Overall Influence

#807

Ritva Serimaa

#157267

Overall Influence

1957 - 2016 (59 years)

Ritva Serimaa was a Finnish physicist and professor, the first female professor of physics at the University of Helsinki. She gained her master's degree in 1982 and defended her doctoral thesis in 1990, becoming a docent of the University of Helsinki in 1992. Her doctoral thesis work and later research concerned X-ray physics and scattering. From 1991 to 1993 she worked at Stanford University making use of their synchrotron light source SSRL. One research focus was the structure of the preserved Swedish warship Vasa, whose structure was at risk due to damage from sulfur-containing compounds....

#808

Marjorie Shapiro

#150503

Overall Influence

Marjorie Dale Shapiro is an American experimental particle physicist, a collaborator on the ATLAS experiment, a faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley.

#809

Francesca Gherardi

#157642

Overall Influence

#810

Anna Köhler

#152496

Overall Influence

Anna Köhler is a German physicist who is a Professor of Physics at the University of Bayreuth. Her research considers electronic processes in organic and organometallic molecules. She makes use of optical and electrical spectroscopy to better understand photo-physical processes. In 2020 she became the first woman to win the Max Born Medal and Prize.

#811

Vesna Milosevic-Zdjelar

#31032

Overall Influence

Vesna Milosevic-Zdjelar is a Serbian-born Canadian astrophysicist, science educator and author. Her specialty is teaching astrophysics to students enrolled in non-science programs at the University of Winnipeg.

#812

Silvia Picozzi

#150758

Overall Influence

Silvia Picozzi is an Italian physicist who researches density functional theory, ferroelectricity, and antiferromagnetism at the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. She is an elected fellow of the American Physical Society.

#813

Saskia Mioduszewski

#140352

Overall Influence

Saskia Mioduszewski is a nuclear physicist and professor at Texas A&M University. Education Mioduszewski completed an undergraduate degree in physics and mathematics in 1994 at North Carolina State University. In 2000, she obtained her PhD in physics from the University of Tennessee. Her PhD thesis was called Centrality dependence of antiproton production in Proton-Nucleus Collisions at 17.5 and 12.3 GeV.

#814

Judy Brown

#95420

Overall Influence

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

#815

Lorenza Viola

#130160

Overall Influence

Lorenza Viola is an Italian-US theoretical physicist who works in quantum information science at Dartmouth College in Hanover, United States as the James Frank Family Professor of Physics. Education and career Viola earned a master's degree in physics from the University of Trento in 1991. She completed her Ph.D. in 1996 at the University of Padua with a dissertation Relativistic stochastic quantization through co-moving coordinates supervised by Laura M. Morato.

#816

Tina Kahniashvili

#152729

Overall Influence

Tina Kahniashvili is a Georgian physicist and researcher. She studies theoretical cosmology, gravitational waves, theoretical astrophysics , and dark energy. She is a professor of physics and astronomy at Ilia State University, an associate research professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and is the main scientist at Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory.

#817

Magda Ericson

#119285

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Magda Galula Ericson is a French-Algerian physicist of Tunisian origin. Her experimental pioneering PhD work changed the understanding of critical phenomena near the Curie point and later in her career she has become known for her theoretical development of the Ericson-Ericson Lorentz-Lorenz correction.

#818

Pippa Goldschmidt

Pippa Goldschmidt

#91464

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Pippa Goldschmidt is a British fiction writer, formerly based in Edinburgh, Scotland but now living in Germany. Education Goldschmidt has a background in science, having completed an undergraduate degree in physics with astronomy at the University of Leeds and a PhD in Astronomy at University of Edinburgh.

#819

Catherine Kallin

#77760

Overall Influence

Catherine Kallin is a Canadian theoretical quantum condensed matter physicist whose research topics have included spin wave theory, the quantum Hall effect, frustrated antiferromagnets, chirality in superconductors, and high-temperature superconductivity. She is a professor emerita of physics and astronomy at McMaster University.

#820

Audrey C. Delsanti

#101976

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Audrey Delsanti is a French astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The Minor Planet Center credits her with the discovery of two numbered minor planets, but erroneously gives the credit to "A. Dalsanti" for the trans-Neptunian object , which she co-discovered in 1999.

#821

Roser Maria Valentí

#152651

Overall Influence

Maria Roser Valentí is a Spanish-Catalonian professor of theoretical condensed matter physics at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. Biography In 1987 Valentí graduated from the University of Barcelona with honors, in 1989 she then finished also finished her doctoral thesis in theoretical condensed matter physics with distinction at the University of Barcelona After her dissertation she was named Fulbright-Fellow allowing her to study at the University of Florida.

#822

Gretchen Campbell

#61418

Overall Influence

Gretchen K. Campbell is an American atomic, molecular, and optical physicist associated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. She works in the field of atomtronics and has received awards in recognition of her research contributions on Bose-Einstein condensates.

#823

Bianca Poggianti

#155752

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Bianca Maria Poggianti is an Italian astronomer studying the evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters. Originally from Pisa, she is a director of research for INAF, the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, associated with the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Padua.

#824

Maiken Mikkelsen

#147713

Overall Influence

Maiken Mikkelsen is a physicist who won the Maria Goeppert Mayer award from the American Physical Society in 2017 for her work in quantum nanophotonics. She is currently the James N. and Elizabeth H. Barton Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and an associate professor of physics at Duke University.

#825

Julie Borchers

#61884

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Julie Ann Borchers is an American physicist. Education Borchers received her B.S. in physics at the University of Dayton in 1984. She completed a Ph.D. at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1990. Borcher's doctoral advisor was Myron Salamon. Her dissertation was titled Structural and magnetic properties of erbium thin films and Er/Y superlattices.

#826

Elena Kazimirtchak-Polonskaïa

#97757

Overall Influence

1902 - 1992 (90 years)

Olena Ivanivna Kazymyrchak-Polonska was a Ukrainian astronomer and member of the International Astronomical Union, who studied the motion of comets and their orbital evolution. Asteroid 2006 Polonskaya was named in her honor.

#827

Nikta Fakhri

#99249

Overall Influence

Nikta Fakhri is an Iranian-American physicist who is the Thomas D. & Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Associate Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research considers non-equilibrium physics in living systems. She was awarded the 2022 American Physical Society Early Career Award for Soft Matter Research.

#828

Geneviève Comte-Bellot

#76827

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Geneviève Comte-Bellot is a French physicist specialising in fluid dynamics. She is known for her work on turbulence and aeroacoustics. Biography Comte-Bellot was born on 29 July 1929. After obtaining her diploma from the Université Grenoble Alpes in 1953, she earned her master's degree at the École normale supérieure in Paris the following year. She taught at a high school in Chalon-sur-Saône from 1954 to 1956, before joining the French National Center for Scientific Research as a Senior Research Associate; Comte-Bellot remained in this position until 1967. In 1963, Comte-Bellot completed he...

#829

Judy Hirst

#39561

Overall Influence

Judy Hirst is a British scientist specialising in mitochondrial biology. She is Director of the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge. Early life and education Hirst grew up in Lepton, a village near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and attended King James's School and Greenhead College, Huddersfield. She studied for an M.A. in chemistry at St John's College, Oxford, and then was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1997, for research supervised by Fraser Armstrong on electron transport in redox enzymes.

#830

Ila Fiete

#70496

Overall Influence

Ila Fiete is an Indian–American physicist and computational neuroscientist as well as a Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences within the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fiete builds theoretical models and analyses neural data and to uncover how neural circuits perform computations and how the brain represents and manipulates information involved in memory and reasoning.

#831

Graciela Gelmini

#152615

Overall Influence

Graciela Beatriz Gelmini is a theoretical physicist who specializes in astroparticle physics. She is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles , and became a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2004.

#832

Anneke Levelt Sengers

#107661

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Johanna Maria Henrica Levelt Sengers is a Dutch physicist known for her work on critical states of fluids. She retired from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1994, after a 31 year career there. In 2005 Levelt Sengers was co-chair for the InterAcademy Council of the advisory report 'Women for Science' published June 2006. She currently co-chairs the InterAmerican Network of Academies of Sciences women for science program.

#833

Bridget Carragher

Bridget Carragher

#94203

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Bridget Olivia Carragher is a South African physicist specialized in electron microscopy. Carragher is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University and the founder and Chief Operations Officer of NanoImaging Services, Inc. She is also the director of the National Resources for Automated Molecular Microscopy , director of the Simons Electron Microscopy Center at New York Structural Biology Center and PI at the National Center for CryoEM Access and Training.

#834

Ille Gebeshuber

Ille Gebeshuber

#88687

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Ille Christine Gebeshuber is an Austrian physicist who is specialized in nanophysics and biomimetics. Biography Ille Gebeshuber studied at the Vienna University of Technology, where she continued to work as a key researcher and lecturer. From 2009 until 2015 she was a professor at the Institute of Microengineering and Nanoelectronics at the National University of Malaysia . Since 2016 she is back at her home institution, the Vienna University of Technology, at the Institute of Applied Physics. Her book "Wo die Maschinen wachsen: Wie Lösungen aus dem Dschungel unser Leben verändern werden" w...

#835

Li-Chyong Chen

#146921

Overall Influence

Li-Chyong Chen is a Taiwanese physicist. Career Chen completed her bachelor's of science degree in physics at National Taiwan University between 1977 and 1981. She then attended Harvard University from 1983 to 1989, where she earned a doctorate in applied physics. Chen returned to Taiwan in 1994, and is a professor of physics at National Taiwan University.

#836

Silvia Vignolini

#112959

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Silvia Vignolini is an Italian physicist who is Director of research at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces and Professor of Chemistry and Bio-materials in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Her research investigates natural photonics structures, the self-assembly of cellulose and light propagation through complex structures. She was awarded the KINGFA young investigator award by the American Chemical Society and the Gibson-Fawcett Award in 2018.

#837

Priscilla Laws

#118497

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Priscilla Watson Laws is an American physics educator, known for her work in activity-based physics education. She is a research professor of physics at Dickinson College. Education and career Laws majored in physics, with a minor in mathematics, at Reed College, graduating in 1961. She did her graduate studies at Bryn Mawr College, earning a master's degree in experimental nuclear physics in 1963 and completing her Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics in 1966.

#838

Dorte Juul Jensen

#95333

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Dorte Juul Jensen is a senior scientist and head of the Center for Fundamental Research: Metal Structures in Four Dimensions and Materials Research Division, Risø DTU National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, Roskilde, Denmark. Risø operates under the auspices of the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, researching a wide range of technologies and training Ph.D candidates in the sciences.

#839

Katherine Joy

#71730

Overall Influence

Katherine Helen Joy is a Professor in Earth Sciences at the University of Manchester. Joy has studied lunar samples from the Apollo program as part of her research on meteorites and lunar science. Early life and education Joy was educated at Sackville School, East Grinstead and studied geology at Royal Holloway, University of London where she graduated with first class honours in 2003. Joy was a doctoral student at University College London working on the evolution of the Moon supervised by Ian Crawford. Her work considered sample analysis and remote sensing. She held a joint position at the Natural History Museum, London.

#840

Susan M. Scott

#119467

Overall Influence

Susan Marjorie Scott is an Australian mathematical physicist whose work concerns general relativity, gravitational singularities, and black holes. She is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Australian National University .

#841

Eun-Suk Seo

#134342

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Eun-Suk Seo is a Korean-American astrophysicist known for her observational research on cosmic rays. She is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she is also affiliated with the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and heads the Cosmic Ray Physics Group.

#842

Rachel Bean

#63687

Overall Influence

Rachel Bean is a cosmologist and theoretical astrophysicist. She is a professor of astronomy and the interim dean of the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences. Education Bean received her bachelor's degree from Cambridge University . After graduation, she worked in the strategy division at Accenture before returning to academia. She received her master's and doctorate in theoretical physics from Imperial College London. She did postdoctoral research at Princeton University, before becoming a faculty member at Cornell University in 2005.

#843

Margarita Rosado

#152474

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Margarita Eugenia del Socorro Rosado Solís is a Mexican astronomer who studies the motion of nebulae, galaxies, and the interstellar medium, including the use of interferometry and the construction of scanning interferometers, kinematic calculations, and computer simulation. She is a professor and researcher in the National Autonomous University of Mexico Institute of Astronomy.

#844

Róisín Owens

#69774

Overall Influence

2000 - 2017 (17 years)

Róisín Owens is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Her research investigates new engineering technology for biological applications with a focus on organic bioelectronics, developing electroactive materials that can be used between physical transducers and soft biological tissues.

#845

Catherine Meusburger

#88838

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Catherine Meusburger is an Austrian mathematician and physicist. She works at the interface between mathematical physics, algebra and geometry. Since 2011 she has served as professor of mathematics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

#846

Jean Laby

#95515

Overall Influence

1915 - 2008 (93 years)

Jean Elizabeth Laby was an early Australian atmospheric physicist. Biography Laby was born in Parkville, Victoria. She is the daughter of Beatrice Littlejohn and Thomas Howell Laby, a professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. Laby was educated at the Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School and then at the University of Melbourne, during the same time as her father's professorship. She gained a BSc in 1939, MSc in 1951, and PhD in 1959. She was the first woman to be awarded a PhD in physics from the University of Melbourne, and the first to be appointed lecturer...

#847

Marjorie Olmstead

#152982

Overall Influence

Marjorie Ann Olmstead is an American condensed matter physicist. Education Olmstead majored in physics at Swarthmore College for her B.A. and graduated with highest honours in 1979. After her junior year, she worked at Bell Labs for a summer through a research program to support women and minority groups, where she became interested in the interactions between semiconductors and insulators when creating stacks. She received her M.A. in 1982 and her PhD in 1985, both from the University of California, Berkeley.

#848

Juli Feigon

#55827

Overall Influence

Juli Feigon is a Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she has been a faculty member since 1985. She was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2009. Her research focuses on structural studies of nucleic acids by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy along with other biophysical techniques.

#849

Claudine Rinner

#128913

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Claudine Rinner is a French amateur astronomer from Ottmarsheim in Alsace, France. She is an observer at Ottmarsheim Observatory and a discoverer of minor planets and comets, who received the Edgar Wilson Award for her discoveries.

#850

Bonny L. Schumaker

#155925

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Bonny Laura Schumaker is an American physicist and pilot who worked on the LISA Pathfinder. In 2010 she founded the nonprofit "On Wings of Care", a charity which protects animals and environments. Early life and education Schumaker was born and raised in Wisconsin, near Lake Michigan. She wanted to be a vet but was awarded a scholarship to study physics at the California Institite of Technology. She loved mathematics, and continued at the California Institute of Technology for her graduate studies, earning a PhD in 1985. She worked under the supervision of Kip Thorne. Over six papers, her PhD thesis considered theoretical investigations into nonlinear quantum optics.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions