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.

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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,

#1201

Olga Boudker

#182238

Overall Influence

Olga Vladimirovna Boudker is a Russian born physicist who is a professor of physiology and biophysics at the Weill Cornell Medicine. She looks to understand the mechanisms of membrane transporters in cellular function. She was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.

#1202

Malgorzata Dobrowolska-Furdyna

#182763

Overall Influence

Malgorzata "Margaret" Dobrowolska-Furdyna is a Polish–American physicist. As the associate dean for undergraduate studies in the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame, Dobrowolska-Furdyna has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#1203

Olga Shishkina

#180915

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (36 years)

Olga Shishkina is a Russian physicist known for her research in fluid mechanics, including turbulence, Rayleigh–Bénard convection, and the structure and motion of boundary layers. She is a researcher in the Laboratory for Fluid Physics, Pattern Formation and Biocomplexity of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, Germany, where she leads the "Theory of Turbulent Convection" group.

#1204

Adela Ringuelet

Adela Ringuelet

#174733

Overall Influence

1930 - 2023 (93 years)

Adela Emilia Ringuelet was an Argentine astrophysicist and astronomer at the Félix Aguilar Observatory in Argentina. She was a co-founder of the Argentine Astronomical Association and an active member of the International Astronomical Union , where she had been affiliated with several of its commissions. As of 2017, she was a member of IAU's Division G, "Stars and Stellar Physics". Her research includes more than 100 publications in the field of stellar spectroscopy.

#1205

S. Gail Glendinning

#123683

Overall Influence

Sharon Gail Glendinning is an American experimental physicist. Glendinning completed her bachelor degree in experimental physics at Middlebury College in 1973, and graduated from Duke University seven years later with a doctorate in the same field of study. She published the dissertation Elastic and Inelastic Neutron Scattering Cross Sections for 10B, 11B, and 16O. Glendinning remained at Duke to conduct postdoctoral research, and subsequently worked for General Electric within the nuclear fuels division. In 1985, she joined the inertial confinement fusion program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory .

#1206

Natasha Holmes

#180719

Overall Influence

Natasha Holmes is a physics education researcher and the Ann S. Bowers Assistant Professor of Physics at Cornell University. She researches teaching and learning in physics and STEM fields including how students acquire knowledge, the effects of course environment on learning, and the development of scientific ways of thinking. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph in 2009 then went to UBC to get her Master's and Ph.D. by 2014 before becoming a post-doctoral researcher at Stanford University and then on to a professorship at Cornell University in 2017.

#1207

Elvira Moya de Guerra

#182841

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Elvira Moya de Guerra is a Spanish theoretical nuclear physicist who became the first female full professor of physics in Spain. She is a professor emerita of physics at the Complutense University of Madrid. Her research topics have included double beta decay.

#1208

Isabelle Cantat

#67752

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Isabelle Cantat is a French physicist specializing in foams and their fluid dynamics. She is a professor in the Institute of Physics of Rennes at the Education and career Cantat was born on 5 January 1974 in Rennes. She earned an agrégation in physics in 1996 through study at the École normale supérieure de Lyon. She completed a doctorate in 1999 and a habilitation in 2006.

#1209

Heather Patrick

#176928

Overall Influence

Heather Jean Patrick is an American physicist. She is a researcher and project lead at National Institute of Standards and Technology. Patrick's research focuses on applications of scattering and reflectance measurements, advanced light sources, and robotics to the characterization and metrology of optical materials.

#1210

Amy Connolly

#182541

Overall Influence

Amy Lynn Connolly is an American physicist. She is an associate professor in the Department of Physics at Ohio State University and a Fellow of the American Physical Society for "her contributions to experimental and theoretical studies of ultrahigh energy neutrinos, and to searches for these neutrinos using radio techniques."

#1211

Svetlana Zaginaichenko

#152118

Overall Influence

1957 - 2015 (58 years)

Svetlana Yurievna Zaginaichenko was a Ukrainian solid state physicist. She studied the physical properties of carbon materials and their application to hydrogen energy storage. She was a nominee for the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work in studying fullerenes.

#1212

Arlene Maclin

#177671

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Arlene Paige Maclin is an American physicist and academic administrator. Maclin was one of the first African American women to receive a PhD in physics. She is a professor at Howard University. Early life and education Maclin was born in Rawlings, Virginia on June 7, 1945. She earned her B.S. in engineering physics from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1967. She was an undergraduate research assistant. After graduating, she spent time as a post-baccalaureate fellow at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges.

#1213

Marina Huerta

#170938

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Marina Huerta is an Argentinian theoretical physicist and a physics professor. She is known for her work on quantum entropy in quantum field theory. She has provided a new interpretation of the Bekenstein bound. As of 2020, she has 29 peer-reviewed publications with more than 2000 citations.

#1214

Helen Margolis

#120283

Overall Influence

Helen Sarah Margolis is a British physicist who is a Senior Fellow and Head of Science for Time and Frequency at the National Physical Laboratory. Her research considers the use of optical frequency metrology using femtosecond combs.

#1215

Emily Warren

#149407

Overall Influence

Emily Warren is an American chemical engineer who is a staff scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Her research considers high efficiency crystalline photovoltaics. Early life and education Warren became interested in science as a child. At elementary school, she campaigned to save the rainforest. Warren was an undergraduate student at Cornell University, where she studied chemical engineering and became aware of the energy industry. She travelled to Nigeria for a course on sustainable development. She was a graduate student at California Institute of Technology. Her research considered the growth of silicon microwire arrays using vapor–liquid–solid methods.

#1216

Julia Velkovska

#182367

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Julia Apostolova Velkovska is a Bulgarian-American high energy particle physicist who is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Physics at Vanderbilt University. Her research considers nuclear matter in the extreme conditions generated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. She hopes that this work will help to explain the mechanisms that underpin the strong force.

#1217

Mary James

#174540

Overall Influence

Mary B. James is an American physicist and educator. She is the Dean for Institutional Diversity and the A. A. Knowlton Professor of Physics at Reed College. James specializes in particle physics and accelerators.

#1218

Anna Fontcuberta i Morral

#180289

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Anna Fontcuberta i Morral is Spanish physicist and materials scientist. Her research focuses on nanotechnology applied in the production of solar cells. She is a full professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the head of the Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials.

#1219

Hana El-Samad

#125429

Overall Influence

Hana El-Samad is a Lebanese-American scientist who is a founding Principal Investigator at Altos Labs and a Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. Her work considers control theory and the function of complex biological systems. Her group has made contributions to systems biology, synthetic biology, and cell engineering.

#1220

Ibiyinka A. Fuwape

#174562

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Ibiyinka A. Fuwape is a Nigerian academic, professor in physics and the 2nd substantive Vice-Chancellor of the Michael and Cecilia Ibru University, a private university in Nigeria. Early life Ibiyinka Fuwape was born in Lagos State on December 8, 1962 to the family of David Ademokun. She started her education at Reagan Memorial Baptist Girls Primary School, Yaba, Lagos. She proceeded to Methodist Girls High School where she earned her Ordinary level certificate, later earned her Higher School Certificate from 1979 to 1981 at Queen's College Yaba. She graduated from the University of Ibadan with a Bachelor of Science first class honors degree in Physics.

#1221

Marina Guenza

#178725

Overall Influence

Marina Guenza is an Italian theoretical physical chemist who studies the fluid dynamics of macromolecules. She is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Oregon. Education and career Guenza earned a master's degree at the University of Genoa in 1985, and completed her Ph.D. in 1989 through a consortium of the University of Genoa, University of Turin, and University of Pavia.

#1222

Agnès Fienga

#143331

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Agnès Fienga is a French astronomer working at the Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Éphémérides. She is active in the field of planetary ephemerides generation and is member of the International Astronomical Union . She collaborated with Dr. E. Myles Standish in researches on the asteroids and their impact on the orbital motions. Fienga is also interested in testing gravitational theories from planetary motions. She has recently processed Cassini ranging data, finding an anomalous feature of motion in Saturn's orbit, according to the results by Dr. Elena V. Pitjeva.

#1223

Evgenia Zabolotskaya

#138484

Overall Influence

Evgenia Andreevna Zabolotskaya was a Russian-American physicist known for her contributions to nonlinear acoustics. The Khokhlov–Zabolotskaya equation and the Khokhlov–Zabolotskaya–Kuznetsov equation in nonlinear acoustics are named in part for her.

#1224

Hanhee Paik

#148726

Overall Influence

Hanhee Paik is a South Korean experimental quantum computing researcher who works for IBM Research at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where she helps develop superconducting devices for storing and operating on qubits.

#1225

Francesca Iacopi

#174073

Overall Influence

Francesca Iacopi is an engineer, researcher and an academic. She specializes in materials and nanoelectronics engineering and is a professor at the University of Technology Sydney. She is a chief investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Transformative Meta-Optical Systems, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia, and a senior member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

#1226

Sarah Eno

#82784

Overall Influence

Sarah C. Eno is an American experimental particle physicist at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she is a professor of physics and UMD Distinguished Scholar–Teacher. She has participated in several large experimental collaborations in high-energy physics, including the AMY experiment at the Japanese TRISTAN particle accelerator, the DØ experiment at Fermilab in the US, the Collider Detector at Fermilab, and the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in France and Switzerland.

#1227

Elżbieta Kossecka

Elżbieta Kossecka

#173223

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Elżbieta Kossecka is a Polish physicist. She is a professor of technical sciences and a researcher at the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research, Polish Academy of Sciences. Education and career A graduate of the University of Warsaw, she graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics in 1962, obtaining a master's degree in theoretical physics. After a one-year internship at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, the University of Warsaw, she worked for two years as an assistant at the Department of Mathematical Methods of Physics. In 1965, she started working at the Institute ...

#1228

Renata Wentzcovitch

#169782

Overall Influence

Renata M. M. Wentzcovitch is a condensed matter physicist, known for her work on simulating materials at the quantum-mechanical level, including participating in the Quantum ESPRESSO project. Her work has focused mainly on materials at extreme pressure and temperature conditions typical of planetary interiors. She is a professor of material science and applied physics and of earth and environmental science at Columbia University.

#1229

Marialuisa Aliotta

#182637

Overall Influence

Marialuisa Aliotta is an Italian experimental nuclear astrophysicist whose research uses particle accelerators located deep underground to investigate the nuclear reactions within stars, nucleosynthesis, and the connections between these reactions and the lifetime and evolution of stars. She is a professor at the University of Edinburgh, where she holds a personal chair in experimental nuclear astrophysics.

#1230

Willetta Greene-Johnson

#181210

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Willetta Greene-Johnson is a senior lecturer in the physics and chemistry departments at Loyola University Chicago. She was one of the first African-American women to complete a Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics. Greene-Johnson is also a Grammy award winning musician for her song "Saved" .

#1231

Monica Craciun

#181195

Overall Influence

Monica Felicia Crăciun is a British-Romanian physicist who is a Professor of Nanoscience at the University of Exeter. Her research investigates 2D Materials for civil engineering, wearable technologies and optoelectronic devices. Craciun has pioneered the incorporation of graphene into concrete, wearable technologies and optoelectronic devices.

#1232

Laurie Rousseau-Nepton

#69395

Overall Influence

Laurie Rousseau-Nepton is a Canadian astronomer at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and was the first Indigenous woman in Canada to obtain a Ph.D. in astrophysics.

#1233

Susan Houde-Walter

#162281

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Susan Nicole Houde-Walter is an academic and technical executive in the field of optics. She was professor of optics at the University of Rochester from 1987-2005. She used to run LaserMaxDefense, a manufacturer of laser equipment for military and law enforcement. She served as president of the Optical Society in 2005 and has travelled extensively with the US military. Currently, she is the director of the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

#1234

Susan Lepri

#184520

Overall Influence

Susan Lepri is an American space scientist and is currently Professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan. She led development of portions of the Heavy Ion Sensor which was launched onboard the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter mission in February 2020. She has been director of the University of Michigan Space Physics Research Laboratory since 2021.

#1235

Hai-Ping Cheng

#170490

Overall Influence

Hai-Ping Cheng is a Chinese-American physicist whose "research crosses the boundaries between many sciences, such as chemistry, materials science, and engineering". Much of her research concerns the computational simulation of nanostructures, including nanowires and nanotubes. She is also a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, with whom she is a coauthor of highly cited work on binary black holes and the gravitational waves they emit. She is a professor of physics at the University of Florida, where she directs both the Quantum Theory Project and the Center for Molecular Magnetic Quant...

#1236

Kasia Rejzner

#136417

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (39 years)

Katarzyna Anna Rejzner is a Polish mathematical physicist specializing in algebraic quantum field theory and the theory of renormalization, including the Batalin–Vilkovisky formalism. She works as a reader in mathematics at the University of York.

#1237

Amy B. Jordan

#82434

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Amy B. Jordan is an American astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets who works at the University of Colorado. Career In 2002 she was part of the team which discovered , a resonant Kuiper belt object at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Chile. She also co-discovered two main-belt asteroids. In 2005, she was a teaching assistant at the Summer Science Program, which teaches astronomy to high school students using a curriculum based on observing and calculating orbits of asteroids.

#1238

Melissa Mather

#144182

Overall Influence

Melissa Louise Mather is an Australian physicist who is Professor in Biological Sensing and Imaging at the University of Nottingham. Her research considers the development of novel sensing techniques, including ultrasound, single molecule imaging and nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond.

#1239

Marta Sales-Pardo

#176726

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Marta Sales-Pardo is a Spanish statistical physicist, complex systems scientist, and network scientist. She is an associate professor at Rovira i Virgili University, in the Department of Chemical Engineering. She is notable for her contributions to complex networks, where she has studied both social and biochemical systems, especially the contribution of each node or individual to the overall network. Her research has earned several mentions in the Fulbright Program and the ICREA Program, among others.

#1240

Tanya Leise

#66759

Overall Influence

Tanya L. Leise was an American biomathematician specializing in the mathematical modeling of circadian rhythms and related phenomena such as jet lag and hibernation. She was a professor of mathematics at Amherst College.

#1241

Jacqueline van Gorkom

#183780

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Jacqueline Henrie͏̈tte van Gorkom is a Dutch radio astronomer and Rutherfurd Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University. Van Gorkom is known for her contributions to the field of galaxy evolution, particularly through observations of neutral hydrogen gas.

#1242

Claudia Fischbach

#138594

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Claudia Fischbach is a German biophysicist who is the Stanley Bryer 1946 Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University. She is Director of the Cornell Physical Sciences Oncology Centre on the Physics of Cancer Metabolism.

#1243

Viv Kendon

#179715

Overall Influence

Vivien Mary Kendon is a British physicist who is Professor of Quantum Technology at the University of Strathclyde. Her research considers quantum computation and the properties of quantum walks. She is the director of the Computational Collaborative Project: Quantum Computing, which looks to develop useful applications of quantum computers.

#1244

Judith Hillier

#147828

Overall Influence

Judith Mary Hillier is a British physicist who is associate professor of science education at the University of Oxford. She is a lead tutor for the Postgraduate Certificate in Education programme in science and serves as vice president of Kellogg College, Oxford. She was awarded the Marie Curie-Sklodowska medal by the Institute of Physics in 2021 for her support of women in physics.

#1245

Laura M. Roth

#92420

Overall Influence

Laura M. Roth is an American solid state physicist, and an American Physical Society Fellow. Career Around 1960, Roth was working at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and along with Mildred Dresselhaus, she was one of only two women among approximately 1000 men. Around this time she was also encouraged and mentored by Benjamin Lax. She has also co-authored papers with Kenneth Button.

#1246

Katja Matthes

#185240

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

#1247

Lisa Barsotti

#184957

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Lisa Barsotti is a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kavli Institute. Biography She obtained her PhD from University of Pisa in 2006 on The control of the Virgo interferometer for gravitational wave detection and moved to the United States in 2007 to work on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory .

#1248

Susan Ellis

#184719

Overall Influence

Susan Marian Ellis is a geophysicist based in New Zealand, who specialises in modelling the geodynamics of the Earth's crust deformation, at different scales. Ellis is a principal scientist at GNS Science and her main interests are in subduction, seismology, tectonics, crust and petrology. Ellis's current work focuses on the influence of faulting on stresses in the crust, and how this is related to geological hazard and the tectonic settings in New Zealand.

#1249

Élisabeth Guazzelli

#164007

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Élisabeth Guazzelli is a French experimental physicist whose research concerns fluid mechanics, suspensions of particles in liquids, and particle-laden flows. She is a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research , affiliated with the Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes at the University of Paris. Currently, Guazzelli serves as the editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics Rapid edited by Cambridge University Press.

#1250

Lan Yang

#141778

Overall Influence

Lan Yang is a Chinese-born physicist specializing in optics. Lan Yang earned her bachelor's and first master's of science degrees at the University of Science and Technology of China in 1997 and 1999, respectively. She completed a second master's degree in materials science at the California Institute of Technology in 2000, and remained at Caltech to pursue a doctorate in applied physics, which she obtained in 2005. Lan Yang began teaching at the Washington University in St. Louis in 2007, as an assistant professor. She became an associate professor in 2012, then a full professor in 2014, as Edwin H.

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