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).

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List of the most influential female people in Physics,

#1051

Carla Faria

#173249
Overall Influence
Carla Figueira De Morisson Faria is a Brazilian physicist and professor at University College London. She works on theoretical strong-field laser-matter interactions. Early life and education Faria is from Belém. She studied physics at the University of São Paulo. She worked with Vanderlei Bagnato on cold matter and atom trapping. Her masters dissertation considered magneto-optical traps. She joined the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy in Berlin, where she was supervised by Wolfgang Sandner. Faria joined the Max Planck Institute for Physics in 1999. She held postdoctoral positions at TU Wien, Leibniz University Hannover and Max Born Institute.
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#1052

Jana Zaumseil

#115057
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Jana Zaumseil is a German chemist who is a professor of physical chemistry at Heidelberg University. She serves as dean of the faculty of chemistry and earth sciences. Her research considers organic electronic materials for optoelectronics.
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#1053

Lindsay Glesener

Lindsay Glesener
#174501
Overall Influence
Lindsay Erin Glesener is a professor in the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Minnesota . She is a National Science Foundation CAREER Award researcher and lead investigator on the FOXSI Sounding Rocket.
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#1054

Polina Anikeeva

#102373
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Polina Olegovna Anikeeva is a Russian-born American materials scientist who is a Professor of Material Science & Engineering as well as Brain & Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . She also holds faculty appointments in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Her research is centered on developing tools for studying the underlying molecular and cellular bases of behavior and neurological diseases. She was awarded the 2018 Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science, the 2020 MacVicar Faculty F...
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#1055

Beatriz Noheda

#147643
Overall Influence
Beatriz Noheda is a professor at the University of Groningen and the director of the Groningen Cognitive Systems and Materials Center . She is particularly well known for discovering the monoclinic phase at the morphotropic phase boundary in lead zirconate titanate and other piezoelectrics, for her pioneering work in ferroelectric hafnia and for the development of memristors.
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#1056

Anne Borg

#156334
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Anne Borg is a Norwegian professor of physics and rector at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. She was prorector of education at NTNU from August 1, 2017 to August 20, 2019. She was appointed acting rector of NTNU on August 21, 2019, later being officially employed as rector on December 13 the same year.
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#1057

Adriana Marais

Adriana Marais
#96984
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Adriana Marais is a South African theoretical physicist, technologist and advocate for off-world exploration. She is a director of the Foundation for Space Development Africa, an organisation aiming to send Africa's first mission to the Moon, the Africa2Moon Project. She is the founder of Proudly Human, an initiative of which is the Off-World Project, a series of habitation experiments in Earth's most extreme environments.
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#1058

Barbara Kegerreis Lunde

#126286
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Barbara Kegerreis Lunde is an American physicist and electrical engineer. She worked for NASA in the 1960s, where she developed several instruments for various projects. Lunde became the second woman to graduate from Iowa State University with a doctorate in physics and the first woman in Iowa to become a professional electrical engineer.
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#1059

Margaret Benston

#53888
Overall Influence
1937 - 1991 (54 years)
Margaret "Maggie" Lowe Benston was a professor of chemistry, computing science, and women's studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was a respected feminist and labour activist, as well as a founding member of the Vancouver Women's Caucus, in 1988, the Euphoniously Feminist and Non-Performing Quintet in 1970, Simon Fraser University's Women's Studies Program in 1975, and Mayworks in 1988. For thirty years, Benston worked locally, nationally, and internationally writing articles, giving speeches, and lobbying politicians on behalf of the women's and labour movement.
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#1060

Halina Abramczyk

Halina Abramczyk
#139031
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Halina Abramczyk is a Polish physicist and chemist, a specialist in molecular spectroscopy and laser spectroscopy professor employed at the Lodz University of Technology. She is the daughter of Edward Chachuła and Salomea Kryszak . She studied in 1969–1974 at the University of Łódź, where she earned a master's degree in physics and received a doctorate in 1982 at the Lodz University of Technology for work "Molecular Dynamics in two-component solutions containing benzene ". After obtaining her doctorate in chemistry she continued scientific research in the Institute of Applied Radiation Chemistry of Technical University of Lodz, headed by prof.
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#1061

Rhonda Stroud

#167900
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Rhonda M. Stroud is a materials physicist and planetary scientist at Arizona State University, where she serves as Director of the Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies. From 1998- 2022, she was a Research Physicist at the United States Naval Research Laboratory, where she led the Nanoscale Materials Section. She is known for her research on nanostructures, including quasicrystals and aerogel, and on the materials that make up comets and cosmic dust. She pioneered the use of focused ion beam technology in the study of meteorites.
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#1062

Kirsten Kraiberg Knudsen

Kirsten Kraiberg Knudsen
#163275
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Kirsten Kraiberg Knudsen is a professor of astrophysics in the department of Space, Earth and Environment at Chalmers University of Technology. Her research concerns galaxy formation and evolution. She is a member of the Swedish Young Academy and the International Astronomical Union
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#1063

Elizabeth Donley

#176225
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Elizabeth Ann Donley is an American physicist. She is a researcher in the time and frequency division at the Physical Measurement Laboratory. Donley's research areas include the operation and development of atomic fountain clocks and chip scale atomic devices and instruments.
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#1064

Heather Lewandowski

Heather Lewandowski
#173839
Overall Influence
Heather Lewandowski is a professor of physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. She looks to understand the quantum mechanical processes in making chemical bonds. She uses time-varying inhomogeneous electric fields to achieve supersonic cooling. She also studies how students learn experimental skills in instructional physics labs and help to improve student learning in these environments. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
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#1065

Junko Shigemitsu

#58157
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Junko Shigemitsu is a Japanese-American physicist known for her use of lattice gauge theory and lattice QCD to calculate predicted values for decay constants and other physical quantities. She is a professor emerita of physics at Ohio State University.
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#1066

Valeria Ferrari

#175255
Overall Influence
Valeria Ferrari is an Italian physicist whose research concerns the theoretical modeling of gravitational waves, and the oscillations in black holes and neutron stars that could cause them. She is a professor of theoretical physics at Sapienza University of Rome.
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#1067

Carmelle Robert

#168571
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Carmelle Robert is a Quebec astrophysicist, starburst researcher and professor at the Department of Physics, Physical Engineering and Optics at Université Laval, in Quebec City, Quebec. Biography Robert earned her undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Sherbrooke , and her master's and a doctorate in astrophysics from, University of Montreal . She also completed her postdoctoral fellowships including one with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland . As a graduate student, Robert investigated the wind clumps observed in the spectrum of the Cygnus Wolf-Rayet stars, using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope with her advisor Anthony Moffat.
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#1068

Silvana Botti

#175279
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Silvana Botti is a full professor for Physics at the University of Jena. She is an expert in the development of first-principles methods for electronic excitations and methods for theoretical spectroscopy.
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#1069

Rosalind J. Allen

#125871
Overall Influence
Rosalind Jane Allen is a soft matter physicist and Professor of Theoretical Microbial Ecology at the Biological Physics at the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Germany, and Professor of Biological Physics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland She is a member of the centre for synthetic biology and systems biology where her research investigates the organisation of microbe populations.
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#1070

Liliane Léger

Liliane Léger
#172320
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Liliane Léger née Quercy is a French physicist. Her research considers polymers and the molecular mechanisms of adhesion. She was awarded the Groupe Français d’Études et d’Applications des Polymères Prix d’Honneur in 2021.
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#1071

Sylvie Vauclair

Sylvie Vauclair
#150521
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Sylvie Vauclair is a French astrophysicist , and professor emeritus , where she taught for more than 30 years. She also taught for a decade at the Paris Diderot University. She has served as president of the Société Française d'Astronomie et d'Astrophysique.
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#1072

Renée C. Kraan-Korteweg

#173835
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Renée C. Kraan-Korteweg is a Dutch-South African scientist. She is head of the University of Cape Town department of astronomy and founder and co-director of the Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravity Centre. She serves as vice president of the executive committee of the International Astronomical Union and is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.
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#1073

Ceri Brenner

Ceri Brenner
#159950
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (37 years)
Ceri Brenner is a plasma physicist at the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Education She studied physics at the University of Oxford. Following a summer placement at the Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Brenner developed an interest in high power laser-plasma physics. Brenner earned a PhD in physics from the University of Strathclyde under the supervision of David Neely and Paul McKenna. She completed her doctoral experiments at Central Laser Facility, UK and the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany. Her doctoral thesis was titled 'Lase...
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#1074

Caroline Morley

#174894
Overall Influence
Caroline Morley is an American scientist, teacher and astronomer researching exoplanet atmosphere science. Education and career Morley is an assistant professor at The University of Texas, in the department of astronomy. Morley’s knowledge is displayed in multiple informational articles, including scientific information about climate, planetary mass, and use of astrological equipment. Morley earned a bachelor's degree in physics, earth, atmosphere, and planetary sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2010. She also earned her PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz i...
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#1075

Zehra Sayers

#93444
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Zehra Sayers is a Turkish-British structural biologist. She has previously served as Interim President of the Sabancı University and co-chaired the scientific advisory committee for Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East . She was part of a five-scientist group that received the AAAS Award for Science Diplomacy in 2019. She holds Turkish and British citizenship.
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#1076

Gail McConnell

Gail McConnell
#130594
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Gail McConnell is a Scottish physicist who is Professor of Physics and director of the Centre for Biophotonics at the University of Strathclyde. She is interested in optical microscopy and novel imaging techniques, and leads the Mesolens microscope facility where her research investigates linear and non-linear optics.
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#1077

Suzanne Scarlata

#172495
Overall Influence
Suzanne Frances Scarlata is the Richard Whitcomb Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She is known for her work on how cells respond to hormones and neurotransmitters. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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#1078

Ursula Gibson

Ursula Gibson
#82493
Overall Influence
Ursula J. Gibson is a materials scientist who specialises in novel core optical fibres. Early life and education Gibson was born in Sheffield, England, and moved to the US in the 1960s, living in the Philadelphia area, then Ithaca, New York. She received in A.B. in physics from Dartmouth College. She received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Cornell University under the supervision of Robert Buhrman in 1978 and 1982, respectively. Her graduate research was in the area of thin film composites. During her doctoral work she held a Bell Laboratories Graduate Research Program for Women grant, and spent ...
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#1079

Tabbetha Dobbins

Tabbetha Dobbins
#152707
Overall Influence
Tabbetha A. Dobbins is an American physicist and an associate professor of Physics & Astronomy at Rowan University, where she also serves as the vice president for research. Her research investigates the relationship between structure and dynamics in composite materials using neutron and X-ray scattering with applications to modern engineering problems in carbon nanotubes, gold nanoparticles, the hydrogen fuel economy and polymer self-assembly.
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#1080

Florence Shirley Patterson Jones

#129868
Overall Influence
1913 - 2000 (87 years)
Florence Shirley Patterson Jones was a Canadian-born American astronomer. Early life Florence Shirley Patterson was born in Newmarket, Ontario, the daughter of William and Florence Patterson. She earned undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics at the University of Toronto in 1935. The following year she worked on a project at David Dunlap Observatory, and earned a master's degree at Toronto with her astronomy thesis, titled ""Stellar wavelengths from spectrographs of small dispersions." In 1938 she moved to Massachusetts and worked at the Harvard College Observatory, under advisors Harlow Shapley and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.
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#1081

Natasha Flyer

#99952
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Natasha Flyer is an American earth scientist and applied mathematician known for her expertise on radial basis functions. She works as a research scientist in the Analytics and Integrative Machine Learning laboratory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and is also an affiliate of the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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#1082

Nicole Bell

#162650
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Nicole F. Bell is an Australian physicist who is a professor at the University of Melbourne. She is a theoretical physicist who works on dark matter, neutrino physics, and other topics in particle and astroparticle theory
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#1083

Tatjana Tchumatchenko

#119351
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Tatjana Tchumatchenko is a physicist in the field of theoretical neuroscience. She is an independent Max Planck Group Leader and, since November 2020, professor for Computational Neuroscience of Behavior at the Faculty of Medicine of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . In her research she investigates how neural networks compute and how particular activity patterns emerge from synaptic and neuronal features.
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#1084

Dawn K. Erb

#175950
Overall Influence
Dawn K. Erb is an American physicist. She is an associate professor in the department of physics at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Early life and education Erb completed her PhD in astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology in 2005 and accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian.
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#1085

Corinne Manogue

#52327
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Corinne Alison Manogue is an American physicist who has worked in general relativity, mathematical physics, and physics education. She was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2005, and was an inaugural Fellow of the American Association of Physics Teachers in 2014.
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#1086

Elisabetta Matsumoto

#109570
Overall Influence
Elisabetta Matsumoto is an American physicist whose scientific interests include the study of knitted fabrics' special mathematical and mechanical properties. After earning her PhD Matsumoto accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
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#1087

Iryna Adamenko

#174809
Overall Influence
1935 - 2010 (75 years)
Iryna Ivanivna Adamenko was a Ukrainian scientist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, and Professor at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Biography Iryna Ivanivna Adamenko was born on January 25, 1935, in Kyiv. In 1957, she graduated from the Faculty of Physics at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. She worked at the same university since 1958, starting as a senior research fellow, then an assistant, a senior lecturer, associate professor , professor , and later as a leading research fellow, professor-consultant.
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#1088

Anita Cochran

#171557
Overall Influence
Anita L. Cochran is an American astronomer, planetary scientist, and senior research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also the assistant director for research support at the McDonald Observatory. She focuses on the study of primitive bodies in the solar system and the composition of comets.
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#1089

Christine Aidala

Christine Aidala
#165161
Overall Influence
Christine Angela Aidala is an American high-energy nuclear physicist, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan. She studies nucleon structure and parton dynamics in quantum chromodynamics.
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#1090

Judith Dawes

#165320
Overall Influence
Judith M. Dawes is an Australian physicist who is Professor of Physics at Macquarie University. She studies the interactions of light at the nanoscale and the applications of lasers in sensing. She is a former president of the Australian Optical Society, and a Fellow of SPIE and Optica .
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#1091

Helene Langevin

Helene Langevin
#29629
Overall Influence
Helene Langevin is Director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the National Institutes of Health . She was a professor in the University of Vermont College of Medicine's Department of Neurological Sciences. She is best known for characterizing certain cellular and mechanical effects of acupuncture. She was also a Professor in Residence of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital. Prior to working at NIH, Langevin was the Director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, jointly owned by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medic...
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#1092

Inger-Lena Hultberg

#136905
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Inger-Lena Lamm, née Hultberg is considered to be the first woman in Sweden who volunteered for an education designed for those entering military service. Biography Born and raised in Lund, Hultberg's father was a teacher and her mother, literary historian. She showed an interest in technology from an early age, specializing in maths at high school and working on a special project in aerodynamics. She was always interested in the family's car and motorcycles. While studying English in England, she spent her free time observing the planes at Croydon Airport and Biggin Hill, famous for its wartime activities.
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#1093

Kelly Korreck

#175983
Overall Influence
Kelly Korreck is an American space scientist. She is currently an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian and Program Scientist at NASA as head of operations for the Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons instrument aboard the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft.
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#1094

Bernice Durand

#105572
Overall Influence
1942 - 2022 (80 years)
Bernice Black Durand was an American particle physicist and emeritus Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She was also the emeritus Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate. Early life and education Durand was born in Clarion, Iowa. Her father studied mechanical engineering at Iowa State University and Harvard University, and joined the United States Army Corps of Engineers. She grew up in Ames and attended Radcliffe College, but never finished her course. She eventually completed her bachelor's degree from Iowa State University in 1965. She earned her PhD with a dissertation titled A point and local position operator, in 1971.
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#1095

Antonina Roll-Mecak

#168316
Overall Influence
Antonina Roll-Mecak is a Romanian-born American molecular biophysicist. She is currently the Senior Investigator and Chief of the Unit of Cell Biology and Biophysics at the National Institutes of Health. She holds appointments at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; and at the Biochemistry and Biophysics Center of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. Roll-Mecak is known for her work in understanding cytoskeletal regulation, mechanisms of microtubule dynamics and laying the groundwork for deciphering the complexities of the tubulin code. She is also known for he...
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#1096

Elizabeth Villa

#155726
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Villa is an American biophysicist who is Associate Professor at the University of California, San Diego. Her research considers the development of Cryo Electron Tomography and structural biology. She was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Investigator in 2021.
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#1097

Sharon Robinson

#176493
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Sharon Anita Robinson is an Antarctic researcher known for her work on climate change and bryophytes. She is Deputy-Director Science Implementation and UOW Node Lead of the Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future program, a Special Research Initiative on Excellence in Antarctic Science from the Australian Research Council, awarded $36 million over a seven year period . She is also the Dean of Researcher Development and Integrity at the University of Wollongong.
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#1098

Rosine Lallement

#177149
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Rosine Lallement is a French researcher at the Paris Observatory and a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Lallement studies the heliosphere and interstellar medium. In her research, she has helped demonstrate that the motion of the interstellar cloud outside the heliosphere is identical to that of interstellar helium inside the heliosphere. She is a member of the IAU.
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#1099

Olga Smirnova

#175521
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
Olga Smirnova is a German physicist who is Head of the Strong Field Theory Group at the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy and Professor at the Technical University of Berlin. Her research considers the interaction of strong fields with atoms and molecules.
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#1100

Amy Rowat

#124538
Overall Influence
Amy Rowat is an Associate Professor of biophysics at the University of California in Los Angeles and the first Marcie H. Rothman Presidential Chair in Food Studies. Her scientific research focuses on understanding the physical and mechanical properties of cells in diseases such as cancer. She also organizes public events on the science of cooking.
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