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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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Physics,

#1151

Stephanie C. Werner

#161360

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Stephanie C. Werner is a German geologist and planetologist, known for her work on Mars and the Arctic. She is a professor in the Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics of the University of Oslo in Norway.

#1152

Valerie M. Thomas

#151801

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Valerie Margaret Thomas is an American physicist and environmental engineer, with broad research interests in environmental technology including aspects of the subject relating to materials science, energy systems, transportation and transportation energy use, and economics. She is the Anderson Interface Professor of Natural Systems at Georgia Tech, appointed jointly to the schools of industrial and systems engineering and public policy.

#1153

Beatrix Hiesmayr

#175789

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Beatrix C. Hiesmayr is an Austrian physicist who studies quantum mechanics and quantum information theory from a combination of theoretical and experimental points of view. She is a privatdozent at the University of Vienna, where she heads the Quantum Particle Workgroup.

#1154

Li Minhua

#76222

Overall Influence

1917 - 2013 (96 years)

Li Minhua , also known as Minghua Lee Wu, was a Chinese aerospace engineer and physicist who was an expert in solid mechanics. The first woman to earn a PhD in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she was one of the founding scientists at the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences , and was elected as an academician in 1980. Her husband Wu Zhonghua was also an accomplished physicist and CAS academician.

#1155

Cynthia Olson Reichhardt

#111818

Overall Influence

Cynthia J. Olson Reichhardt is an American condensed matter physicist whose research involves the use of computer simulations to study disordered media and non-equilibrium systems, with applications to the understanding of how aging affects stockpiled nuclear weapons. She is a member of the technical staff at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she is affiliated with the Physics and Chemistry of Materials Group, and with the Center for Nonlinear Studies.

#1156

Jess McIver

#178935

Overall Influence

Jess McIver is an American astronomer. She is an Associate Professor and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Gravitational Wave Astrophysics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia. McIver is a member of LIGO, one of the recipients of the Science 2017 Breakthrough of the Year.

#1157

Oana Jurchescu

#177600

Overall Influence

Oana Jurchescu is a Romanian physicist who is the Baker Family Physics Professor at Wake Forest University. Her research considers charge transport in organic and organic/inorganic hybrid semiconductors. In 2022, she was awarded a National Science Foundation Special Creativity Award for her work translating organic electronic materials into real-world devices.

#1158

Srubabati Goswami

#155935

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Srubabati Goswami is an Indian scientist specialising in High Energy Physics, Astroparticle Physics, and Neutrino Physics . She is the first Indian woman to earn a Ph.D. in neutrino oscillations from the Science College, University of Calcutta. She did her research in the PRL and Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and later worked in the Harish Chandra Research Institute. She is a Senior Professor in Theoretical High Energy Physics in the Physical Research Laboratory. She is a fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India and Indian National Science Academy.

#1159

Felicitas Pauss

#109987

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Felicitas Pauss is an Austrian physicist. She obtained her PhD, Berechnung von Neutron-Proton Polarisationsobservablen , from University of Graz, Austria, in 1976. Pauss has published almost 1500 scientific papers and has given over 450 talks. From 2009 to 2013 she was in charge of International Relations at CERN. Prior to becoming a professor at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich in 1993, while at Cornell and CERN, she was member of UA1 and L3 collaborations. In 1994, she joined the CMS collaboration and contributed to its design, construction, and management.

#1160

Viviana Acquaviva

#105226

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Viviana Acquaviva is an Italian astrophysicist who is a professor in the Department of Physics at the New York City College of Technology. Her research interests consider data science and machine learning for physics and astronomy. She was named one of Italy's most inspirational technologists in 2019.

#1161

Lisa Goddard

#60839

Overall Influence

1966 - 2022 (56 years)

Lisa Marie Goddard was an American climate scientist who was director at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society . She joined the institute in 1995 and served as IRI's director from 2012 to 2020. Goddard was also an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University.

#1162

Carrie Anderson

Carrie Anderson

#141443

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Carrie Anderson is an American planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Education Anderson is from Arizona. She earned a Bachelors in physics from Arizona State University in 2000. She moved to the New Mexico State University for her doctoral studies and graduated in 2006. Upon graduation she became a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow.

#1163

Kay Kinoshita

#153996

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Kay Kinoshita is an experimental particle physicist. She is a professor at University of Cincinnati. Kinoshita completed her undergrad studies in Physics at Harvard University in 1976 and her PhD at University of California, Berkeley in 1981. She then returned to work at Harvard, before becoming a full professor at Virginia Tech in 1993.

#1164

Georgeanne R. Caughlan

Georgeanne R. Caughlan

#180981

Overall Influence

1916 - 1994 (78 years)

Georgeanne Caughlan was an American astrophysicist known for her work on stellar energy generation. Her compilation of experimental data of the rates of nuclear reactions was instrumental in establishing the theory of nucleosynthesis that led to a Nobel Prize for William A. Fowler.

#1165

Jennie McCormick

#179344

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Jennie Margaret McCormick , FRASNZ is a New Zealand amateur astronomer and asteroid discoverer who conducts astronomical research from the Farm Cove Observatory in Auckland. She discovered the asteroid officially named New Zealand and has contributed to and been involved in a range of organisations and events to promote astronomy. McCormick has published in several journals and won awards for her contributions to astronomy.

#1166

Stefanie Barz

#136771

Overall Influence

Stefanie Barz is a German physicist and Professor of Quantum Information and Technology at the University of Stuttgart. She studies quantum physics and quantum information in photonics. Early life and education Barz studied mathematics, physics and computer sciences at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. During her undergraduate studies she was an Erasmus Programme student at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. She earned her PhD in Vienna before moving to the University of Oxford, where she worked in quantum photonics. She was awarded the University of Vienna LaudiMaxima Prize for her dissertation.

#1167

Clare Elwell

#152005

Overall Influence

Clare Elwell is a British academic who is a professor of medical physics and director of the Near Infrared Spectroscopy Group and Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory at University College London. She has served as president of the International Society on Oxygen Transport to Tissue and the Society for Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy.

#1168

Nirit Dudovich

#180105

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Nirit Dudovich is an Israeli physicist who is the Robin Chemers Neustein Professorial Chair at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Her work considers strong field light-matter interactions and the generation of attosecond pulses. She was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016.

#1169

Jessamyn Fairfield

Jessamyn Fairfield

#177142

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

Jessamyn Fairfield is an American physicist who researches biocompatible nanomaterials and neuromorphic devices at NUI Galway. Early life and education Fairfield earned a BA in physics and applied math at the University of California Berkeley in 2005, before an MSc and PhD in physics at the University of Pennsylvania in 2011.

#1170

Magdalena González Sánchez

#180562

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

María Magdalena González Sánchez is a Mexican astrophysicist, nuclear physicist, researcher, and professor best known for her contributions in gamma ray research and for being the head of the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Experiment . She has published 90 articles about her field of study in indexed journals. In 2015 she received the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Recognition from the National Autonomous University of Mexico .

#1171

Maryam Modjaz

#181339

Overall Influence

Maryam Modjaz is a German-American astrophysicist who is a professor and Director of Equity and Inclusion at the New York University. Her research considers the death of massive stars. She was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship in 2018, which she spent at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

#1172

Elisa Riedo

#118111

Overall Influence

Elisa Riedo is a physicist and researcher known for her contributions in condensed matter physics, nanotechnology and engineering. She is the Herman F. Mark Chair Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering and the director of the picoForce Lab.

#1173

Anke Kracke

#181656

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (41 years)

Anke Kracke is a German experimental physicist affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg . Kracke studied physics at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. In 2007, she began doctoral work with Klaus Blaum at MPIK. She defended her thesis, The g-factor of the valence electron bound in lithiumlike silicon 28Si11+: The most stringent test of relativistic many-electron calculations in a magnetic field, in 2013. She subsequently worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Florida State University with Edmund G. Myers.

#1174

Kiisa Nishikawa

#173750

Overall Influence

Kiisa Nishikawa is a biomechanist, and holds the rank of Regents' Professor of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University. Research career Nishikawa is the principal investigator leading the Muscle and Motor Control Laboratory at Northern Arizona University , where her laboratory investigates muscle contraction, including the role of titin and developing bio-inspired control algorithms for motorized prostheses for lower limbs. Previously, Nishikawa's lab acquired an atomic force microscope in order to test how changes in the giant titin protein impact muscle mechanical properties . Nis...

#1175

Deborah E. Citrin

#154205

Overall Influence

Deborah E. Citrin is an American clinician-scientist researching pre-clinical and clinical testing of radiation modifiers and the mechanisms of normal tissue injury from radiation. She is a senior investigator and deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's Center for Cancer Research.

#1176

Geraldine A. Kenney-Wallace

#160907

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Geraldine Anne Kenney-Wallace is a British-Canadian academic. She served as the president and vice-chancellor of McMaster University from 1990 to 1995. She was educated in England and later earned her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. Kenney-Wallace was responsible for organizing the first ultrafast laser lab in Canada, in 1974, at the University of Toronto. She was a professor of chemistry and physics at the University of Toronto and had served as Chairman of the Science Council of Canada. She is a recipient of a E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship , Guggenheim Fellowship , and ...

#1177

Sarah K. England

#27284

Overall Influence

Sarah K. England is a physiologist and biophysicist and the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Washington University School of Medicine. England conducts research on cation channels in uterine smooth muscle to understand the biological correlates of preterm birth and is the Associate Program Director of the Prematurity Research Center at Washington University as well as the Vice Chair of Research for the Center for Reproductive Health Sciences. In 2005, England was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow in the Office of Senator Hill...

#1178

Nora Bretón

#94933

Overall Influence

Nora Eva Bretón Báez is a Mexican physicist whose research involves charged black holes. She is a researcher at CINVESTAV, the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute.

#1179

Debora Šijački

#181688

Overall Influence

Debora Šijački is a computational cosmologist whose research involves computational methods for simulating the formation and development of the structures in the universe including galaxies, galaxy clusters, and dark matter, including collaborations in the Illustris project. Originally from Serbia, she was educated in Italy and Germany, and works in the UK as a professor at the University of Cambridge and deputy director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology.

#1180

Alison Walker

#133394

Overall Influence

Alison Bridget Walker is a physicist who is a professor at the University of Bath. Her research considers computational modelling of printed electronic devices and the development of perovskite solar cells. She is best known for her work on the Kinetic Monte Carlo method.

#1181

Joanne Etheridge

#94371

Overall Influence

Joanne Etheridge is an Australian physicist. She is Director of the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy and Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Monash University. Academic career Etheridge graduated with a BSc from the University of Melbourne and a PhD in physics from RMIT University in 1993. In 1994 she moved to the University of Cambridge as Rosalind Franklin Research Fellow, Newnham College and in 1997 became a senior research associate in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy there. From 1999 to 2003 she was Royal Society University Research Fellow in the same department.

#1182

Tara A. Schwetz

#94217

Overall Influence

Tara A. Schwetz is an American biophysicist and government administrator who serves as a deputy director of the National Institutes of Health. She previously served as Acting Principal Deputy Director.

#1183

Joceline Lega

#72364

Overall Influence

Joceline Claude Lega is a French physicist and applied mathematician, interested in nonlinear dynamics. She is a professor in the departments of mathematics, applied mathematics, and epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Arizona, and editor-in-chief of Physica D.

#1184

Cather Simpson

#101966

Overall Influence

Miriam Cather Simpson is a New Zealand-American physics/chemistry academic and entrepreneur. She is currently a professor at the University of Auckland, a joint appointment between the physics and chemistry departments. She is the founder of the Photon Factory laser lab at the University of Auckland and the chief science officer for two spin-off companies, Engender Technologies and Orbis Diagnostics. She is an Associate Investigator for the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies and an Emeritus Investigator for the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology.

#1185

Samar Safi-Harb

#181180

Overall Influence

Samar Safi-Harb is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manitoba and a Canada Research Chair in Supernova Remnant Astrophysics and Extreme Astrophysics. She was the Vice President of the Canadian Astronomical Society from 2020 to 2021.

#1186

Roberta M. Humphreys

#84130

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Roberta M. Humphreys is an American observational stellar astrophysicist. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Minnesota. Her work has included Galactic structure, observational stellar evolution, stellar populations, and large databases. She is best known for her research on massive stars in the Milky Way and in nearby resolved galaxies.

#1187

Tanusri Saha-Dasgupta

#125477

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Tanusri Saha-Dasgupta is an Indian physicist. She is a Senior Professor and Director at S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences. Life She graduated from the renowned Rajabazar Science College, University of Calcutta. She is a Swarnajayanti Fellow. She is an elected fellow of The World Academy of Science , American Physical Society , Indian National Academy of Sciences , Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore , National Academy of Sciences, India, West Bengal Academy of Science & Technology,. She is recipient of J. C. Bose National Fellowship , APJ Kalam HPC award , "MRSI-ICSC Superconductivity & Materials Science Annual Prize" for the year 2016, Dr.

#1188

Amalia Patanè

#181717

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Amalia Patanè is an Italian physicist who is a professor and Director of Research for the Faculty of Science at the University of Nottingham. She serves as UK Director of the European Magnetic Field Laboratory. Her research considers the quantum behaviour of electrons in semiconductor nanostructures. She was awarded the Institute of Physics Boys medal in 2007.

#1189

Katherine Aidala

#109019

Overall Influence

Katherine E. Aidala is an American physicist. She is a professor of physics at Mount Holyoke College and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Early life and education Aidala obtained a B.S. in applied physics and psychology from Yale University in 2001. At Yale, she was involved in the Rob Schoelkopf Lab, a quantum computing research lab with a focus on superconductors. She then received her M.A. in applied physics from Harvard University, followed by her Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard in 2006. At Harvard, she was involved in building the He-3 cooled scanning probe microscope at t...

#1190

Pupa Gilbert

#172999

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Pupa Gilbert is an American biophysicist and geobiologist. She has been pioneering synchrotron spectromicroscopy methods since 1989, and she continues to use and develop them today. Since 2004 she has focused on biomineralization in sea urchins, mollusk shells, and tunicates. She and her group are frequent users of the Berkeley-Advanced Light Source.

#1191

Patricia L. Clark

#172957

Overall Influence

Patricia Louise Clark is an American biophysicist. She is the Rev. John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C., Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, associate vice president for research, and director of the Biophysics Instrumentation Core Facility at the University of Notre Dame.

#1192

Ikue Mori

#168937

Overall Influence

Ikue Mori is a Japanese scientist. She is known for her work on molecular, cellular and neural circuit analyses of thermotaxis behavior in C. elegans. She is Director of Neuroscience Institute and Professor of Molecular Neurobiology of the Graduate School of Science in Nagoya University, Japan. In 2013, she became the first woman to receive Tokizane Award, the most prestigious neuroscience award in Japan, and in 2017, was awarded Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon.

#1193

Sakura Pascarelli

#46109

Overall Influence

Sakura Pascarelli is an Italian physicist and the scientific director at the European XFEL. Her research focuses on the study on matter at extreme conditions of pressure, temperature and magnetic fields, in particular using X-ray absorption spectroscopy and X-ray Magnetic Linear and Circular Dichroism .

#1194

Barbara Cohen

#176544

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Barbara Cohen is a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The asteroid 6816 Barbcohen is named after her. Education Cohen is from upstate New York. She earned a bachelor's degree in geology from State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1993. She joined Phi Beta Kappa during her studies. She moved to the University of Arizona for her doctoral studies, where she received a University of Arizona Graduate College Fellowship and NASA Graduate Student Research Program Fellowship, and graduated in 2000. Here Cohen looked to understand impact rates on the moon using microbeam analysis and Argon–argon dating of lunar meteorites.

#1195

Carrie Nugent

#127198

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

Carrie Nugent is an assistant professor of computational physics and planetary science at Olin College. She studies near-Earth objects. She is also a popular science communicator, and is a Senior TED Fellow. The asteroid 8801 Nugent was named after her.

#1196

Tracy Northup

#155112

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Tracy E. Northup is an American physicist who works at the Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Innsbruck. Her research considers the development optical cavities and trapped ions to better quantum mechanical interactions. She was awarded the 2016 Start-Preis of the Austrian Science Fund.

#1197

Phyllis Bolds

#171934

Overall Influence

1933 - 2018 (85 years)

Phyllis Gaynell Bolds was an American physicist who worked for the United States Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Early life and education Bolds was born the ninth of ten children in the family of Anna Y. and Albert J. Allen. She received the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Medal Award for 1947-48. She graduated as a valedictorian from Dunbar High School, part of the Dayton Public School System, in 1950. Bolds was the inaugural recipient of the Delta Sigma Theta Debutante Scholarship. She studied physics at Central State College, earning a degree in physics magna cum laude in 1954.

#1198

Katharina Ribbeck

#168655

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Katharina Ribbeck is a German-American biologist. She is the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is known as one of the first researchers to study how mucus impacts microbial behavior. Ribbeck investigates both the function of mucus as a barrier to pathogens such as fungi, bacteria, and viruses and how mucus can be leveraged for therapeutic purposes. She has also studied changes that cervical mucus undergoes before birth, which may lead to a novel diagnostic for the risk of preterm birth.

#1199

Eleni Diamanti

#106192

Overall Influence

Eleni Diamanti is a Greek engineer who is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research . Diamanti serves as Vice Director of the Paris Centre for Quantum Computing. She was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant in 2018.

#1200

Marian Willinger

Marian Willinger

#171619

Overall Influence

Marian Doberman Willinger is an American scientist. She was a program officer at the National Institutes of Health where she expanded maternal and child health initiatives. Education Willinger completed a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences in 1976. Her dissertation was titled Studies of the fate of surface proteins during phagocytosis by rabbit polymorphonuclear neutrophils.

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