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,

#1351

Maritza Lara-López

#72837

Overall Influence

Maritza Arlene Lara-López is a Mexican astronomer whose research interests include metallicity in galaxy formation and evolution and extragalactic astronomy. She is a participant in the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey, and a researcher and Ramón y Cajal Fellow in the faculty of physical sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid.

#1352

Lia Athanassoula

#189633

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Evangelia Athanassoula is a retired Greek astrophysicist known for her numerical simulations of the dynamics and structure of disc galaxies, and her studies of the fit between theory and observation for these galaxies.

#1353

Sarah K. Noble

#168073

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Sarah K. Noble is a planetary geologist and a program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. Her area of expertise is space weathering processes. She was the Program Scientist for NASA's LADEE spacecraft, and is the Program Scientist for the Psyche mission.

#1354

Rachel Scherr

#190927

Overall Influence

Rachel E. Scherr is an American physics educator, currently an assistant professor of physics at the University of Washington Bothell. Her research includes studies of responsive teaching and active learning, video and gestural analysis of classroom behavior, and student understanding of energy and special relativity.

#1355

Dorota Skowron

#191120

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Dorota Maria Skowron is a scientist at the University of Warsaw. In 2019 she was part of the team that confirmed that the Milky Way galaxy was not flat. She is a member of the International Astronomical Union.

#1356

Tripti Bhattacharya

#187478

Overall Influence

Tripti Bhattacharya is the Thonis Family Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Syracuse University. Education Bhattacharya graduated from Georgetown University in 2010 with a B.S. in Environmental Science. She earned her PhD in Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a NSF-GRFP fellow. Her thesis was titled "Causes and Impacts of Rainfall Variability In Central Mexico on Multiple Timescales". Her research won the Denise Gaudreau Award for Excellence in Quaternary Studies, from the American Quaternary Association in 2014.

#1357

Helen Maynard-Casely

#190398

Overall Influence

Helen Maynard-Casely is an instrument scientist at the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in Sydney, Australia. She has won numerous prizes and is an advocate for the participation of women in STEM.

#1358

Dora Musielak

#84072

Overall Influence

Dora Elia Musielak is an aerospace engineer, historian of mathematics, and book author. She is an expert on high-speed airbreathing jet engines, and an adjunct professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington.

#1359

Tanya Harrison

#79582

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

#1360

Cindy Shannon

#103575

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Cindy Anne-Maree Shannon is an Australian academic best known for her work in the field of Indigenous health. Education Cindy Shannon attended Lourdes Hill College in Brisbane, Queensland before taking her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Queensland, graduating in 1986. She studied a Graduate Diploma in Education at the University of Southern Queensland in 1987. She took a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Southern Queensland in 1993 and a Doctor of Social Science, Political Science and Government from the University of Queensland in 2004.

#1361

Katharine Michie

#184387

Overall Influence

Katharine Arwen Michie is an Australian structural biologist, biochemist and physicist. In 2005 she was named a Fellow of the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science and was also awarded a Marie Curie International Research Fellowship in January, 2006. Michie is currently in charge of the Structural Biology X-ray Facility, a part of the Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

#1362

Madeline Held

#114578

Overall Influence

2000 - 2020 (20 years)

Madeline Held MBE was a British academic in the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences, London South Bank University. She had been the Director of the LLU+ . The unit ran the largest professional development centre in the UK, undertaking capacity building for teacher training in further, higher and community education.

#1363

Elizabeth Morris

#77621

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Elizabeth Mary Morris, , also known as Liz Morris, is a glaciologist and Senior Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Reading since 1995. She was head of the ice and climate division at the British Antarctic Survey, from 1986 to 1999, and president of the International Glaciological Society, from 2002 to 2005.

#1364

Wen Li

#191485

Overall Influence

Wen Li is a space physicist at Boston University. Her research interests include space plasma waves, Earth's radiation belt physics, solar-wind magnetosphere coupling, energetic particle precipitation, and Jovian magnetosphere and aurora: She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

#1365

Anna Barnacka

#191757

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

Anna Barnacka is a Polish astrophysicist and entrepreneur. She is known for her work on gravitational lensing, and astroparticle physics. Education She received her PhDs in astronomy from Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland, and physics from Paris-Sud University conducting her research at French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission in Paris, France. After earning her doctorates, Barnacka became a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. She received a NASA Einstein Fellowship in 2015, dur...

#1366

Qamar Rahman

#147446

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Qamar Rahman is an Indian scientist who has worked extensively in the last 40 years to understand the physiological effects of nanoparticles. She is known internationally for her work on asbestosis, the effects of slate dust and other household and environmental particulate pollution and means for improving occupational health.

#1367

Michaela Musilová

#131110

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (36 years)

Michaela Musilová is a Slovak astrobiologist. She is currently the HI-SEAS director. She has commanded over 30 simulated missions to the Moon and Mars. Biography Musilová was born on 11 October 1988 in Bratislava. Her father is a diplomat and her mother is an archeologist.

#1368

Françoise Soussaline

#191817

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Françoise Soussaline is a French biophysicist and businesswoman, a specialist in cell imaging. She studied physics at the Pierre and Marie Curie University and completed a PhD in molecular spectroscopy in 1973. She began her career as a researcher at Inserm, where she was involved in the development of the first digital scanner in nuclear medicine. She then joined the Frédéric-Joliot hospital department of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission where she developed Positron emission tomography locally as part of a second thesis in biophysics completed in 1984 at the University of Paris-Sud under the direction of Nobel Prize winner Georges Charpak.

#1369

June Lindsey

#102424

Overall Influence

1922 - 2021 (99 years)

June Monica Lindsey was a British-Canadian physical chemist. Whilst working on X-ray crystallography at the University of Cambridge, Lindsey was influential in the elucidation of the structure of DNA. She solved the structures of the purines, adenine and guanine. Her depiction of intramolecular hydrogen bonds in adenine crystals was central to Watson and Crick's elucidation of the double helical structure of DNA.

#1370

Orna Berry

#185495

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Orna Berry , is an Israeli computer scientist, high-tech entrepreneur, and senior executive in the Israeli science and technology industries. In 1996, Berry became the first woman to serve as chief scientist and head of the industrial R&D operation of the Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labour. She was awarded the "Yekirat Hanegev" award from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2012.

#1371

Angela von Nowakonski

#112422

Overall Influence

1953 - 2020 (67 years)

Angela von Nowakonski was a Brazilian physician, researcher and professor at the Institute of Clinical Pathology at the University of Campinas . Biography Nowakonski graduated in medicine at Unicamp, specializing in clinical pathology with residency at Hospital das Clínicas, University of São Paulo and residency in clinical microbiology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Back to Unicamp, she earned the title of Master in Clinical Pathology. From 1987 onwards, she served as head of the Clinical Microbiology Sector, Clinical Pathology Division of the Clinics Hospital at Unicamp, being resp...

#1372

Teresa Morgan

#26925

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Teresa Morgan is an English academic and cleric, best known as the author of Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds and Roman Faith and Christian Faith. Early life and education Teresa Morgan was born on May 30, 1968. She discovered Homer's Iliad and Plato's Republic when she was only nine or ten years of age. Jumping at the chance to learn Latin and Greek at school, she was soon reading the works of Horace, Cicero, Euripides and Plato in their original form. Morgan attended Oxford High School before studying the violin at the Hochschule für Musik, Cologne. She studied as an un...

#1373

Katia Bertoldi

#135678

Overall Influence

Katia Bertoldi is the William and Ami Kuan Danoff Professor of Applied Mechanics at Harvard University. Her research has been highlighted by many news sources including the BBC, and as of June 2020 had been cited over 11,000 times.

#1374

Mingming Wu

#169770

Overall Influence

Mingming Wu is a professor at Cornell University within the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, and associate editor of Physical Biology. Academic career She earned a bachelor's of science degree from Nanjing University in 1984, and completed a doctorate from Ohio State University in 1992. Wu split her post doctoral research between École Polytechnique and the University of California, Santa Barbara, before beginning her teaching career at Occidental College. She joined the Cornell University faculty in 2003. Wu was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016.

#1375

Daniela Jacob

#168834

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Daniela Jacob is a German climate scientist. She heads the Climate Service Center Germany and is a visiting professor at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Biography Jacob studied meteorology from 1980 to 1986 at the Technical University of Darmstadt and received her doctorate in 1991 from the University of Hamburg.

#1376

Alenka Luzar

#184759

Overall Influence

Alenka Luzar was a Slovenian-American physical chemist known for her research on the dynamics of hydrogen bonds in water. Education and career Luzar is originally from Ljubljana, and as a teenager was a member of the Slovenian junior national ski team at the Junior Olympic games associated with the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble. She was educated at the University of Ljubljana, completing her Ph.D. there in 1983.

#1377

Ursula Wertheim

#132280

Overall Influence

1919 - 2006 (87 years)

Ursula Wertheim was a German literary scholar and university teacher at Jena in East Germany. The primary focus of her writing and teaching was on Germany's eighteenth and nineteenth century classical literature.

#1378

Faiza Darkhani

#86422

Overall Influence

1992 - Present (32 years)

Faiza Darkhani is an Afghan environmentalist, women's rights activist, and educator. In 2021, she was part of the 100 Women BBC list, which includes the most inspiring and influential women in the world. Darkhani is one of the few scholars of climate change within Afghanistan. She formally was the director of the National Environmental Protection Agency in Badakhshan province.

#1379

Kathleen Collins

#161536

Overall Influence

Kathleen Collins is an American biophysicist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research considers telomerase RNA structure and telomere function. In 2020 she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#1380

Carmen Magallón

Carmen Magallón

#87864

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Carmen Magallón-Portolés is a PhD, a physicist, and Master in Philosophy of Science by University of Zaragoza, Spain, committed with the advancement of women through researching their contributions to two important fields: science and peace. Her thinking is an important reference in the Spanish studies of Women in Science and Feminist Pacifism. Among her works in this field: Mujeres en pie de paz, Madrid, Siglo XXI, 2006 and Contar en el mundo. Una mirada sobre las relaciones internacionales desde las vidas de las mujeres, Madrid, Horas y horas, 2012.

#1381

Jacqueline Zadoc-Kahn Eisenmann

#159080

Overall Influence

1904 - 1998 (94 years)

Jacqueline Zadoc-Kahn Eisenmann was a French physicist. She was born in Paris to Suzanne Lang and Dr. Léon Zadoc-Kahn, former Chief Medical Officer of the Rothschild Hospital in Paris and president of the central committee of Keren haYesod France. Her grandfather was Zadoc Kahn, the chief rabbi of France.

#1382

Elizaveta Karamihailova

Elizaveta Karamihailova

1897 - 1968 (71 years)

Elisabeth Ivanova Kara-Michailova , alternatively Elisabeth Karamichailova was a Bulgarian physicist of a Bulgarian father and an English mother. She was among the handful of female nuclear physics pioneers at the beginning of the 20th century, established the first practical courses of particle physics in Bulgaria and was the first woman to hold a professorial title in the country.

#1383

Brenna Flaugher

Brenna Lynn Flaugher is an experimental cosmologist who works as a distinguished scientist at Fermilab, where she heads the Astrophysics Department. Flaugher led the development of the Dark Energy Camera at the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile, part of the Dark Energy Survey; she has also been involved in the development of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. By seeking a greater understanding of dark matter, she aims to explain the observed accelerating expansion of the universe.

#1384

Anna McPherson

1901 - 1979 (78 years)

Anna Isobel McPherson was a Canadian physicist and the first female professor in the Department of Physics at McGill University. Early life and education McPherson received a B.A. degree in Mathematics and Physics with First Class Honors from McGill University in 1921. There she received the Anne Molson Gold Medal for excellence, awarded to the best student in physics, mathematics, and physical science at McGill.

#1385

Zinaida Aksentyeva

1900 - 1969 (69 years)

Zinaïda Mikolaïevna Aksentieva was a Ukrainian/Soviet astronomer and geophysicist. Life Aksentieva or Aksentyeva was born in Odessa in 1900. She graduated from Odessa Institute of Public Education in 1924. She worked on mapping gravity and her observatory was one of the first to be able to accurately find the centre of the earth. She worked in Poltava Observatory. She became the observatory director in 1951. Her areas of study were tidal deformation of the earth and gravimeter Earth profiles.

#1386

Florence Lewis

1877 - 1964 (87 years)

Florence Parthenia Lewis was an American mathematician and astronomer. Early life and education Born in Fort Scott, Kansas, Lewis attended the University of Texas for her undergraduate degree, which she received in 1897, and Radcliffe College for a master's degree, which she received in 1906. She earned her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in astronomy and mathematics.

#1387

Bice Sechi-Zorn

1928 - 1984 (56 years)

Bice Sechi-Zorn was an Italian/American nuclear physicist, and professor at the University of Maryland. Life She graduated from University of Cagliari. She met her husband, Gus T. Zorn, at the University of Padua. They both worked at the University of Maryland. She was a professor of physics beginning from 1976 to 1984.

#1388

Mary Acworth Evershed

1867 - 1949 (82 years)

Mary Acworth Evershed was a British astronomer and scholar. Her work on Dante Alighieri was written under the pen name M.A. Orr. Early life Mary Acworth Orr was born to Lucy Acworth and Andrew Orr on 1 January 1867 at Plymouth Hoe. Her father was an officer in the Royal Artillery. Mary grew up in Wimborne and South Stoke in Somerset. Mary’s youngest brother was the colonial administrator Charles William James Orr.

#1389

Cäcilia Böhm-Wendt

1875 - Present (149 years)

Cäcilia Böhm-Wendt was an Austrian physicist, who conducted research on radioactivity. Early life and education She was born Cäcilia Wendt on 4 May 1875 in Troppau, Silesia. She studied at the University of Vienna from 1896 to 1900, where she published work on rational values of trigonometric functions, receiving a doctoral degree for research on special functions of importance in mathematical physics.

#1390

Ruth Wheeler

1877 - 1948 (71 years)

Ruth Wheeler was an American chemist specialising in the field of nutrition and public education. Early life and education Ruth Wheeler was born on 5 August 1877 in Plains, Pennsylvania, to Jared Ward Wheeler and Martha Jane Wheeler . She was taught to read by her mother, and graduated from West Pittston High School in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. Her thinking was influenced by her Welsh grandfather, Rev. Dr. Evan Benjamin Evans, a minister concerned with feeding the poor.

#1391

Angelina Cabras

1898 - 1993 (95 years)

Angelina Cabras was an Italian mathematician and physicist. She earned degrees in mathematics from the University of Turin in 1924 and in physics from the University of Cagliari in 1927. She obtained a position in mathematical physics at Cagliari, later moving to the institute of theoretical mechanics there. Her research concerned higher dimensional rigid body dynamics, the theory of relativity, and inductance.

#1392

Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin

1920 - 1958 (38 years)

Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA , RNA , viruses, coal, and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, Franklin's contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA were largely unrecognized during her life, for which Franklin has been variously referred to as the "wronged heroine", the "dark lady of DNA", the "forgotten heroine", a "feminist icon", and the "Sylvia Plath of molecular biology".

#1393

Maria Goeppert Mayer

Maria Goeppert Mayer

1906 - 1972 (66 years)

Maria Goeppert Mayer was a German-born American theoretical physicist, and Nobel laureate in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics, the first being Marie Curie. In 1986, the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award for early-career women physicists was established in her honor.

#1394

Lise Meitner

1878 - 1968 (90 years)

Lise Meitner was an Austrian-Swedish physicist who was one of those responsible for the discovery of the element protactinium and nuclear fission. While working on radioactivity at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Chemistry in Berlin, she discovered the radioactive isotope protactinium-231 in 1917. In 1938, Meitner and her nephew, the physicist Otto Robert Frisch, discovered nuclear fission. She was praised by Albert Einstein as the "German Marie Curie".

#1395

Beatrice Tinsley

Beatrice Tinsley

1941 - 1981 (40 years)

Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley was a British-born New Zealand astronomer and cosmologist, and the first female professor of astronomy at Yale University, whose research made fundamental contributions to the astronomical understanding of how galaxies evolve, grow and die.

#1396

Kate Scholberg

Kate Scholberg is a Canadian and American neutrino physicist whose research has included experimental studies of neutrino oscillation and the detection of supernovae. She is currently the Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of Physics and Bass Fellow at Duke University.

#1397

Maud Worcester Makemson

1891 - 1977 (86 years)

Maud Worcester Makemson was an American astronomer, a specialist on archaeoastronomy, and director of Vassar Observatory. Early life and education Maud Lavon Worcester was born in 1891 in Center Harbor, New Hampshire. She attended Girls' Latin School in Boston. She briefly attended Radcliffe College, but left to teach school. In 1911, her family moved to Pasadena, California. She was working as a journalist in Bisbee, Arizona when she took an interest in astronomy. She returned to California and taught school while taking correspondence courses and summer classes to qualify for admission to the University of California.

#1398

Harriet Brooks

1876 - 1933 (57 years)

Harriet Brooks was the first Canadian female nuclear physicist. She is most famous for her research in radioactivity. She discovered atomic recoil, and transmutation of elements in radioactive decay. Ernest Rutherford, who guided her graduate work, regarded her as comparable to Marie Curie in the calibre of her aptitude. She was among the first persons to discover radon and to try to determine its atomic mass.

#1399

Alice Leigh-Smith

1907 - 1987 (80 years)

Alice Leigh-Smith , born September 11, 1907, was a Croatian born nuclear physicist. She is best known for being the first woman in British history to receive a PhD in nuclear physics. Additionally, she is remembered for her pioneering research in cancer and for her attempts in the discovery of an elusive element, Element 85.

#1400

Johanna Geertruida van Cittert-Eymers

1903 - 1988 (85 years)

Johanna Geertruida van Cittert-Eymers was a Dutch physicist, historian of science, museum director and author. Early years Johanna Geertruida Eymers was born in Velp, in the Netherlands on 19 June 1903, the only child of teacher Johan Anton Eymers and Johanna Hermina Aleida Huetinck. She graduated from secondary school with a HBS-b diploma in Arnhem in 1921 and moved to Utrecht to begin studying physics at the university there in 1923.

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