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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List of the most influential female people in Physics,

#1251

Carolyn Kuranz

#180627

Overall Influence

Carolyn C. Kuranz is an American plasma physicist whose research involves the use of high-powered lasers at the National Ignition Facility both to help develop inertial confinement fusion and to study how matter behaves in conditions similar to those in shock waves in astrophysics. She is an associate professor at the University of Michigan, in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences.

#1252

Christine Orme

#110572

Overall Influence

Christine A. Orme is an American physicist who studies the growth and decay of materials at surfaces, especially focusing on biomineralization. She is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, working in the BioNanomaterials Group of the Physical and Life Sciences Directorate.

#1253

Amalia Coldea

#180731

Overall Influence

Amalia Ioana Coldea is a Romanian quantum physicist who is an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford. She was awarded the 2019 Institute of Physics Brian Pippard Prize and the 2011 EuroMagnet Prize.

#1254

Jocelyn Read

#182850

Overall Influence

Jocelyn Samantha Read is a Canadian physicist and professor of physics at California State University, Fullerton, known for her research on gravitational waves and neutron stars. She is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and is an author of research characterizing the gravitational waves caused by neutron star and black hole collisions, and using the measurements of those waves to provide observational verification of the equations of state of neutron stars.

#1255

Elizabeth Blanton

#172341

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Elizabeth Lyon Blanton is an American astronomer whose research combines observations of galaxy clusters on a broad range of spectra including radio astronomy, X-ray astronomy, infrared astronomy, and visible-light astronomy. She is an associate professor of astronomy at Boston University, where she directs the Institute for Astrophysical Research.

#1256

Dorte Hammershøi

#39451

Overall Influence

Dorte Hammershøi is a Danish professor at the Department of Electronic Systems at Aalborg University. She works in the field of human sound perception, with special reference to electro-acoustic applications, including audiometric calibration, oto-acoustic emissions, hearing damage, spatial hearing, and measurement of noise sources close to the ear.

#1257

Beth A. Cunningham

#183642

Overall Influence

Beth A. Cunningham is an American physicist. Cunningham earned her undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Kent State University, and subsequently completed postdoctoral training at the Hormel Institute. She began her teaching career at Gettysburg College. After a year in Gettysburg, Cunningham joined the Bucknell University faculty in 1989. At Bucknell, Cunningham became associate dean of the faculty in the college of arts and sciences in 2000, two years before attaining the rank of full professor. Cunningham was appointed provost, dean of the faculty, and physics professor at Illinois Wesleyan University in 2006.

#1258

Erika Benítez

#137461

Overall Influence

Erika María Benítez Lizaola is a Mexican astronomer whose research involves blazars and active galactic nuclei. She is a professor in the Faculty of Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a researcher in the UNAM Institute of Astronomy.

#1259

Caitriona Jackman

#184209

Overall Influence

Caitriona Jackman is an Irish space physicist. In 2021, she became the first female senior professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies Dunsink Observatory. She has made important contributions to understanding the solar wind interactions with planetary magnetospheres.

#1260

Paula Heron

#136809

Overall Influence

Paula R. L. Heron is a Canadian-American physics educator who works as a professor of physics at the University of Washington. Education Heron has bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from the University of Ottawa in 1990 and 1991. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario in 1995.

#1261

Margaret Reid

#170812

Overall Influence

Professor Margaret Daphne Reid from Swinburne University of Technology is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. She is known for her pioneering work in new fundamental tests of quantum theory, including teleportation and cryptography.

#1262

Louise Willingale

#158563

Overall Influence

Louise Willingale is a laser physicist at the University of Michigan and associate director of the National Science Foundation ZEUS facility. Education Willingale completed her undergraduate Physics degree from Imperial College London in 2003 and stayed on to complete her PhD in 2007 with her thesis titled Ion acceleration from high intensity laser plasma interactions: Measurements and applications. She was then a research assistant before moving to the University of Michigan to carry out postdoc studies.

#1263

Karen Holford

#49380

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Karen Margaret Holford is a Welsh engineer, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Cranfield University. She was formerly Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Cardiff University. She is also a former Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Physical Sciences and Engineering and Head of the School of Engineering. She is an active researcher of acoustic emission and her work has been applied to damage assessment inspections on industrial components.

#1264

Susanne Viefers

#182073

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Susanne Friederike Viefers is a German-Norwegian theoretical physicist interested in low-dimensional quantum systems including the Quantum Hall effect, Bose–Einstein condensates, and anyons. She is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oslo in Norway.

#1265

Rodica Ramer

#186248

Overall Influence

Rodica Ramer is a Romanian born Australian professor of microelectronics at the University of New South Wales, where she and her team work on the development of radio-frequency microelectronic technologies, advancing wireless communication technology. She earned a Ph.D from the University of Bucharest in solid-state physics in 1992. Prior to working at UNSW, she was a senior research scientist at the Microwave Laboratory, National Centre for Nuclear Energy of Romania, a research associate at the Superconductivity Laboratory, the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and at the Microwave Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins.

#1266

Kerstin Nordstrom

Kerstin Nordstrom

#122960

Overall Influence

Kerstin N. Nordstrom is an American physicist who is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at Mount Holyoke College. Her research focuses on soft matter physics; her work has been featured in the LA Times and in the BBC News.

#1267

Krystle McLaughlin

#171558

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Krystle McLaughlin is a Caribbean-American structural biophysicist. She is an assistant professor of chemistry at Vassar College. Early life and education McLaughlin grew up in Tobago, where she met Joan and Jay Mandle, professors at Colgate University, who encouraged her to apply. She studied physics at Colgate University, graduating in 2006. She was the only woman of colour in her graduating physics class. At Colgate University she was a leader of the Society of Physics Students. She has since returned to Colgate University, to speak at their annual SophoMORE Connections event, introducing undergraduate students to alumni.

#1268

Christine Muschik

#183441

Overall Influence

Christine A. Muschik is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo as well as a part of the Institute for Quantum Computing.. She completed her PhD in 2011 at the Max-Planck-Institute for Quantum Optics. She completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Innsbruck and the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Castelldefels. As of 2020, she has over 2000 citations on over 50 publications. She has also been featured in several articles in Nature magazine, MIT Technology Review, and Physics World.

#1269

Padi Boyd

#181761

Overall Influence

Padi Boyd is an American astrophysicist. She is the head of NASA's Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory and an Associate Director at the Goddard Space Flight Center. She is the project scientist for NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission.

#1270

Patricia Mooney

Patricia Mooney

#181313

Overall Influence

Patricia May Mooney is a Professor Emerita of Physics at Simon Fraser University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Materials Research Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society.

#1271

Mary Ann Sweeney

#147692

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Mary Ann Sweeney is an American physicist at Sandia National Laboratories. Although her doctoral research concerned astronomy, her work at Sandia has largely concerned inertial confinement fusion and pulsed power.

#1272

Libby Heaney

#171599

Overall Influence

Libby Heaney is a British artist and quantum physicist known for her pioneering work on AI and quantum computing. She works on the impact of future technologies and is widely known to be the first artist to use quantum computing as a functioning artistic medium. Her work has been featured internationally, including in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate Modern and the Science Gallery.

#1273

Stephanie Zimmermann

#177852

Overall Influence

1973 - 2020 (47 years)

Stephanie Zimmermann was a German physicist who worked on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. As a researcher from the University of Freiburg, she was involved in the Muon Detector Control System activities, and she served as muon run-coordinator. She was elected and served as ATLAS Run-Coordinator in 2012–2014. She then became Project Leader of the New Small Wheel project , part of an extensive upgrade, the largest phase 1 upgrade project for the ATLAS detector.

#1274

Valeska Zambra

#184067

Overall Influence

1994 - Present (30 years)

Valeska Zambra is a Chilean physicist specialised in the area of state of matter and strange matter. Early life and scientific career Valeska Zambra has been interested in science since her first years of life. When she was only 12 years old she joined the Sciences Association of her school San Agustín in Copiapó .

#1275

Brigitta Sipőcz

#162490

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

Brigitta Sipőcz is a Hungarian astronomer and discoverer of minor planets. Sipőcz works as a researcher at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. At the time she was searching for the transit of M dwarfs.

#1276

Francesca Calegari

#185822

Overall Influence

Francesca Calegari is an Italian physicist who is lead of the Attosecond Science division at the Center for Free Electron Laser Science at DESY. She is a professor at the University of Hamburg. Calegari is interested in the electron dynamics of complex systems. She was awarded the International Commission of Optics Prize and the Ernst Abbe Medal.

#1277

Mariolina Padula

#77477

Overall Influence

Mariarosaria Padula was an Italian mathematical physicist specializing in fluid dynamics, including free boundary problems and compressible flow with viscosity. She was a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Ferrara, and is also known for revitalizing and heading the university's mathematical journal, Annali dell’Università di Ferrara, and forging it into an internationally known journal.

#1278

Anaïs Orsi

#115532

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Anais Orsi is a climate scientist studying global warming through changes in polar ice. Background Orsi received a Master's Degree in Engineering from the École Polytechnique in 2007. She then obtained a Master's Degree in Oceanography from the University of California, San Diego, and her PhD from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She travels to Antarctica to study internal weather patterns and uses them to predict future climate change.

#1279

Ann-Marie Pendrill

#184447

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

K. Ann-Marie Mårtensson-Pendrill is a Swedish physicist. Originally working in atomic physics, her interests gradually shifted towards physics education, and she has published many works on the physics of playgrounds, and amusement park rides such as roller coasters, including the book Physics for the Whole Body in Playgrounds and Amusement Parks . She is a professor emeritus at the University of Gothenburg, senior professor at Lund University, and the former director of the National Resource Centre for Physics Education.

#1280

Amber S. Boehnlein

#185499

Overall Influence

Amber S. Boehnlein is a particle physicist, computer scientist, and administrator who has held leadership positions at several United States national laboratories and the United States Department of Energy.

#1281

Françoise Masnou-Seeuws

#168465

Overall Influence

Françoise Masnou-Seeuws is a French physicist, specializing in ultracold molecules. Masnou-Seeuws earned a doctorate in physics through Paris Diderot University in 1973. Subsequently, she became a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research, posted to the Laboratoire Aimé Cotton in Orsay.

#1282

Cecilia Gerber

#186288

Overall Influence

Cecilia Elena Gerber is an Argentine-American experimental high-energy physicist whose research involves massive elementary particles: the top quark and Higgs boson. She is UIC Distinguished Professor of Physics and director of undergraduate studies in physics at the University of Illinois Chicago, and the co-director of the LHC Physics Center at Fermilab. Her research has included participation in the DØ experiment at Fermilab and the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in France and Switzerland.

#1283

Mercedes Vila

#141034

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Mercedes Vila Juárez is a Spanish material science researcher. She is the chief technology officer and co-founder of BioTech Foods SL. Path Mercedes Vila Juárez Vila was born in Madrid, Spain. graduated in Physics from the Autonomous University of Madrid with a doctorate in Materials Physics, in December 2003.

#1284

May Kaftan-Kassim

#175704

Overall Influence

1928 - 2020 (92 years)

May Arif Kaftan-Kassim , also known as May A. Kaftan, was an Iraqi radio astronomer. She trained at Harvard University, and advised on the creation of the Erbil Observatory in Iraq in the 1970s. Early life May Arif Kaftan came from a "fairly conventional, very religious Muslim family," by her own account. Her father was a government official. She attended the University of Manchester as an undergraduate and graduate student, on a scholarship for Iraqi students in the sciences. She completed her doctoral studies in astronomy at Radcliffe College in 1958, with a dissertation titled A study of neutral hydrogen in a region in Cygnus.

#1285

Anna Zakrisson

#141310

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Anna Zakrisson is a Swedish science communicator and scientist living in Berlin. Life Zakrisson grew up in Stockholm; her father was a hydrologist and her mother is a medical doctor. She moved to Fagersta Municipality in Västmanland County in 1988 and left Sweden in 1997 for journeys to California, Asia and Africa. She studied at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge and Stockholm University where she completed her doctoral thesis in 2015 entitled "External Growth Control of Baltic Sea Cyanobacteria". From 2004 to 2006 she worked as a researcher for Max-Planck-Institute Cologne. She is the mother of a daughter, born 2008.

#1286

Giorgina Madìa

#172674

Overall Influence

1904 - Present (120 years)

Giorgina Madìa was an Italian physicist and electrical engineer, specializing in electrical communications, and a member of the Italian resistance during World War II. Biography Her parents were Ernesto and Olga Ferrari.

#1287

Ulrike Endesfelder

#181681

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (41 years)

Ulrike Endesfelder is a German physicist known for her work in Single-Molecule Microbiology and Super-resolution microscopy. She is the Group Leader of the Research Group Endesfelder and Full Professor at the Institute for microbiology and biotechnology at the University of Bonn in Bonn, Germany.

#1288

Joan Bernard

#83723

Overall Influence

1918 - 2012 (94 years)

Joan Constance Churchill Bernard, FRSA was Principal of Trevelyan College, University of Durham from its foundation in 1966 to 1978. During World War II, she was an officer of the Auxiliary Territorial Service and was instrumental in Britain's defence against V-1 and V-2 rockets. In later life, she was active in the Church of England.

#1289

Noemi Mirkin

#187257

Overall Influence

Noemi Mirkin from the University of Michigan, was awarded the status of Fellow in the American Physical Society, after they were nominated by their Forum on International Physics in 2007, for her leadership in establishing productive international collaborations, her many achievements in biological molecular physics and for her long service to the international community as an officer and Executive Committee member of the Forum on International Physics.

#1290

Sarah Matthews

#183924

Overall Influence

Sarah Anna Matthews is a British physicist. She is professor and head of solar physics at University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory . She is also chairperson of UK Solar Physics. Biography Born in London, Matthews graduated from the University of Glasgow with a first class honours BSc in 1992, and remained in Glasgow to undertake a PhD in the study of solar flares under the supervision of John Campbell Brown. After being awarded her doctorate in 1996, she joined MSSL to work on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory mission. She has remained a member of the Laboratory's sola...

#1291

Samantha Holdsworth

#147263

Overall Influence

Samantha Jane Holdsworth is a medical physicist from New Zealand. She is a lecturer in medical imaging at the University of Auckland, and a principal investigator at the Centre for Brain Research. Biography Holdsworth was born and grew up on a family farm near the small town of Te Karaka, near Gisborne, New Zealand. She initially studied engineering at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, but changed to physics and completed an honours degree in the subject. She then moved to Australia and completed a master's degree at Queensland University of Technology, followed by a doctorate at t...

#1292

Linda Young

#187269

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Linda Young is a distinguished fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and a professor at the University of Chicago’s Department of Physics and James Franck Institute. Young is also the former director of Argonne’s X-ray Science Division.

#1293

Deborah K. Watson

#180858

Overall Influence

Deborah Kay Watson is an American physicist known for her work on the many-body problem in quantum mechanics. She is a professor emerita of physics at the University of Oklahoma. Education and career Watson is a 1972 graduate of Allegheny College and completed her Ph.D. in chemistry in 1977 at Harvard University. Her dissertation was in two parts, I. Time-dependent Hartree–Fock studies of small molecular systems and II. Adiabatic and resonance states of Li2 and dissociative recombination of Li2+, and was supervised by Alexander Dalgarno.

#1294

Carol Trager-Cowan

#182201

Overall Influence

Carol Trager-Cowan is a Scottish physicist who is a Reader in physics and Science Communicator at the University of Strathclyde. She works on scanning electron microscopy, including Electron backscatter diffraction , diffraction contrast and cathodoluminescence imaging.

#1295

Antoinette Taylor

#185988

Overall Influence

Antoinette Jane Taylor is an American physicist known for her research on metamaterials and nanophotonics including terahertz metamaterials for controlling and generating submillimeter radiation. She is Associate Laboratory Director, Physical Sciences at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

#1296

Andrea Lynn Kritcher

#79142

Overall Influence

#1297

Mar Mezcua

#187426

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

Mar Mezcua Pallerola is a Spanish astrophysicist known for her research on black holes, and especially the intermediate-mass black holes, of masses intermediate between the stellar black holes created in supernovas, and the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. She is a staff scientist at the Institut de Ciències de l'Espai , in Barcelona.

#1298

Heather Williams

#116051

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Heather Ann Williams is a British medical physicist working as a Consultant Medical Physicist for Nuclear Medicine at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust. She is also a lecturer in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at University of Manchester, as well as the University of Salford and University of Cumbria.

#1299

Elisabeth Gwinn

#182266

Overall Influence

Elisabeth Gwinn is a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara . Gwinn was the first woman to join the Physics faculty at UCSB. Gwinn's research team explores topics at the intersection of nanoscience, biology, and optics. She is particularly well known for her work on silver nanoclusters and bimolecular-stabilized derivatives thereof. Gwinn is a prominent advocate for boosting diverse representation in the field of physics. She has been an advocate for increasing accessibility to STEM careers more generally through mentorship opportunities for publ...

#1300

Sam Zeller

#134372

Overall Influence

Geralyn P. Zeller is an American neutrino physicist at Fermilab. At Fermilab, she is a participant in the MiniBooNE experiment, co-spokesperson for the MicroBooNE experiment, and deputy head of the Neutrino Division.

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