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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Physics,

#301

Sera Markoff

#86553

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Sera Markoff is an American astrophysicist and full professor of theoretical high energy astrophysics at the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam. She is a member of the Event Horizon Telescope team that produced the first image of a black hole.

#302

Ilme Schlichting

#24596

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Ilme Schlichting is a German biophysicist. Academic work Ilme Schlichting studied biology and physics at the University of Heidelberg from 1979 to 1987. She earned a PhD in biology there in 1990. Schlichting pursued post-doctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research and at Brandeis University in Boston in the United States as a Feodor Lynen Fellow. From 1994 to 2001 she was head of a working group at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund. Since 2002 she is director of the department for Biomolecular Mechanisms at the Max Planck Institute for Medical ...

#303

Elizabeth H. Simmons

#53808

Overall Influence

Elizabeth H. Simmons is an American theoretical physicist, and Executive Vice Chancellor at University of California San Diego. Formerly, she was a distinguished professor of physics at Michigan State University, the dean of Lyman Briggs College, and the associate provost for faculty and academic staff development. She has also held positions at Harvard University and Boston University. Simmons is married to fellow physicist, R. Sekhar Chivukula. Together they have two children.

#304

Thérèse Encrenaz

#62247

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Thérèse Encrenaz is a French planetary scientist who "played a leading role in the development of planetology in Europe". Her research concerns extraterrestrial atmospheres, particularly of the planets and comets in the Solar System. She is a research director for the CNRS, emeritus, affiliated with the Paris Observatory.

#305

Giulia Galli

#53998

Overall Influence

Giulia Galli is a condensed-matter physicist. She is the Liew Family Professor of Electronic Structure and Simulations in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the department of chemistry at the University of Chicago and senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. She is also the director of the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials. She is recognized for her contributions to the fields of computational condensed-matter, materials science, and nanoscience, most notably first principles simulations of materials and liquids, in particular materials for energy, pro...

#306

Archana Bhattacharyya

Archana Bhattacharyya

#55292

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Archana Bhattacharyya is an Indian physicist. She specializes in the field of ionospheric physics, geomagnetism, and space weather and is Director of the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, Navi Mumbai.

#307

Frances Hellman

#32341

Overall Influence

Frances Hellman is a physicist who was dean of the division of mathematical and physical sciences at the University of California, Berkeley from 2015 until 2021. Her primary academic focus has been the study of the thermodynamic properties of novel solid materials, especially thin film semiconducting, superconducting, and magnetic materials. She has served as chair of the physics department and holds a dual appointment in the materials science and engineering department.

#308

Tamara Smirnova

#64159

Overall Influence

1935 - 2001 (66 years)

Tamara Mikhaylovna Smirnova was a Soviet/Russian astronomer and a discoverer of minor planets and comets. Career From 1966 to 1988, Smirnova was a staff member of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy at Leningrad. She is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 135 numbered minor planets during 1966–1984. She also co-discovered the periodic comet 74P/Smirnova-Chernykh, along with Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh.

#309

Paris Pişmiş

#22326

Overall Influence

1911 - 1999 (88 years)

Marie Paris Pişmiş de Recillas was an Armenian-Mexican astronomer. Pişmiş was born Mari Sukiasian in 1911, in Ortaköy, Istanbul. She completed her high school studies at Üsküdar American Academy. In 1937, she became the first woman to get a Ph.D. from the Science Faculty of Istanbul University. Her advisor was Erwin Finlay Freundlich. Later, she went to Harvard University where she met her future husband Félix Recillas, a Mexican mathematician. They settled in Mexico, and she became the first professional astronomer in Mexico. According to Dorrit Hoffleit, "she is the one person most influen...

#310

Linda Reichl

#55702

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Linda Elizabeth Reichl is a statistical physicist who works in the Center for Complex Quantum Systems at the University of Texas at Austin, and is known for her research on quantum chaos. Education Reichl completed her Ph.D. in 1969 at the University of Denver with the dissertation Microscopic Theory of Quasiparticle Spin Fluctations in a Fermi Liquid. She was advised by Elizabeth R. Tuttle and Ilya Prigogine.

#311

Victoria Kaspi

#52680

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Victoria Michelle Kaspi is a Canadian astrophysicist and a professor at McGill University. Her research primarily concerns neutron stars and pulsars. Early life and education Kaspi was born in Austin, Texas, but her family moved to Canada when she was seven years old. She completed her undergraduate studies at McGill in 1989, and went to Princeton University for her graduate studies, completing her PhD in 1993 supervised by Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Joseph Taylor.

#312

Netta Engelhardt

#67500

Overall Influence

Netta Engelhardt is an Israeli-American theoretical physicist known for her work resolving the black hole information paradox, concerning the apparent loss of physical information from objects that enter black holes and become transformed into Hawking radiation. She is the Biedenharn Career Development Assistant Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

#313

Fay Ajzenberg-Selove

Fay Ajzenberg-Selove

#42166

Overall Influence

1926 - 2012 (86 years)

Fay Ajzenberg-Selove was an American nuclear physicist. She was known for her experimental work in nuclear spectroscopy of light elements, and for her annual reviews of the energy levels of light atomic nuclei. She was a recipient of the 2007 National Medal of Science.

#314

Rama Govindarajan

#29857

Overall Influence

Rama Govindarajan is an Indian scientist specialized in the field of fluid dynamics. She previously worked at the Engineering Mechanics Unit of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research from 1998 to 2012 and as a professor at the TIFR Hyderabad Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences from 2012 to 2016. As of 2019 she is working as a professor at International Centre for Theoretical Sciences , Bengaluru. Govindarajan is a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for the year 2007.

#315

Eve Ostriker

#84427

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Eve Charis Ostriker is an American astrophysicist, known for her research on star formation and on related topics involving superbubbles, molecular clouds, young stars, computational fluid dynamics, and supersonic turbulence. She is a professor in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences of Princeton University.

#316

Eva Nogales

#36738

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Eva Nogales is a Spanish-American biophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as head of the Division of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology . She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

#317

Fiona A. Harrison

#78587

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Fiona A. Harrison is the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy at Caltech, Harold A. Rosen Professor of Physics at Caltech and the Principal Investigator for NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array mission. She won the Hans A. Bethe Prize in 2020 for her work on NuSTAR.

#318

Gillian Wright

#71772

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Gillian Susan Wright is a Scottish astronomer who is currently the director of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh, UK. She has also been involved in the development and construction of the James Webb Space Telescope as the European Principal Investigator for the Mid-Infrared Instrument . In 2006 Wright was appointed MBE for services to science.

#319

Hui Cao

#92578

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Hui Cao is a Chinese American physicist who is the professor of applied physics, a professor of physics and a professor of electrical engineering at Yale University. Her research interests are mesoscopic physics, complex photonic materials and devices, with a focus on non-conventional lasers and their unique applications. She is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#320

Samaya Nissanke

#89109

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Samaya Michiko Nissanke is an astrophysicist, associate professor in gravitational wave and multi-messenger astrophysics and the spokesperson for the GRAPPA Centre for Excellence in Gravitation and Astroparticle Physics at the University of Amsterdam. She works on gravitational-wave astrophysics and has played a founding role in the emerging field of multi-messenger astronomy. She played a leading role in the discovery paper of the first binary neutron star merger, GW170817, seen in gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation.

#321

Deborah Dultzin

#76651

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Deborah Dultzin Kessler is a Mexican astrophysicist specializing in quasars, blazars, active galactic nuclei, and supermassive black holes. She is a professor and researcher in the National Autonomous University of Mexico Institute of Astronomy.

#322

Angela Olinto

#88995

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Angela Villela Olinto is an astroparticle physicist and the Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago as well as the dean of the Physical Sciences Division. Her current work is focused on understanding the origin of high-energy cosmic rays, gamma rays, and neutrinos.

#323

Chiara Mingarelli

#67175

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Chiara Mingarelli is an Italian-Canadian astrophysicist who researches gravitational waves. She is an assistant professor of physics at Yale University since 2023, and previously an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut . She is also a science writer and communicator.

#324

Reva Williams

#67592

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Reva Kay Williams is a theoretical astrophysicist. She is the first person to successfully work out the Penrose process using Einstein's Theory of Relativity to extract energy from black holes. Also, she is the first Black American woman to earn a PhD in theoretical astrophysics. Her work focuses on general relativistic astrophysics.

#325

Kate Marvel

#48575

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Kate Marvel is a climate scientist and science writer based in New York City. She is a senior scientist at Project Drawdown and was formerly an associate research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Engineering's Department of Applied Physics and Mathematics.

#326

Conny Aerts

#79407

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Conny Clara Aerts, born 26 January 1966, is a Belgian professor in astrophysics. She specialises in asteroseismology. She is associated with KU Leuven and Radboud University, where she leads the Chair in the Astroseismology group. In 2012, she became the first woman to be awarded the Francqui Prize in the category of Science & Technology. In 2022, she became the third woman to be awarded the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics for her work in asteroseismology.

#327

Sheila Tinney

#66795

Overall Influence

1918 - 2010 (92 years)

Sheila Christina Tinney was an Irish mathematical physicist. Her 1941 PhD from the University of Edinburgh, completed under the supervision of Max Born in just two years, is believed to make her the first Irish-born and -raised woman to receive a doctorate in the mathematical sciences.

#328

Jess Wade

#49592

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (36 years)

Jessica Alice Feinmann Wade is a British physicist in the Blackett Laboratory at Imperial College London, specialising in Raman spectroscopy. Her research investigates polymer-based organic light emitting diodes . Her public engagement work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics advocates for women in physics as well as tackling systemic biases such as gender and racial bias on Wikipedia.

#329

Rachel Somerville

#77578

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Rachel S. Somerville is an American astronomer and holds the George A. and Margaret M. Downsbrough Chair in Astrophysics at Rutgers University. She is known for theoretical research into galaxy formation and evolution. She was awarded the 2013 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics “For providing fundamental insights into galaxy formation and evolution using semi-analytic modeling, simulations and observations.”

#330

Claire Wyart

#52810

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Claire Julie Liliane Wyart is a French neuroscientist and biophysicist, studying the circuits underlying the control of locomotion. She is a chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite. Early life Wyart was born into a family of scientists. Her mother, Françoise Brochard-Wyart, is a prominent French physicist and a professor at the Curie Institute. Her father, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, was a Nobel-prize winning physicist. As their father was mostly absent, Wyart and her siblings were raised by their mother, though Claire thought of him as "the pillar who held our family together".

#331

Helen Megaw

#47553

Overall Influence

1907 - 2002 (95 years)

Helen Dick Megaw was an Irish crystallographer who was a pioneer in X-ray crystallography. She made measurements of the cell dimensions of ice and established the Perovskite crystal structure. Education and career Megaw was born in Dublin to mathematics teacher Annie McElderry and judge Robert Megaw, two graduates of Queen's University Belfast who were both originally from Ballymoney, Antrim. She was educated at first at Alexandra College in Dublin, and then briefly at Methodist College in Belfast after the family moved back there in 1921, and finally at the Roedean School in England. While still at school, Megaw read Bragg's X-rays and Crystal Structure.

#332

Monica Olvera de la Cruz

Monica Olvera de la Cruz

#16631

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Monica Olvera de la Cruz is a Mexican born, American and French soft-matter theorist who is the Lawyer Taylor Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemistry, and by courtesy Professor of Physics and Astronomy and of Chemical and Biological Engineering, at Northwestern University.

#333

Ellen Gould Zweibel

#93543

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Ellen Gould Zweibel is an American astrophysicist and plasma physicist. In 1973, Zweibel received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and in 1977 her Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University, with a thesis entitled The Equilibrium and Radial Oscillations of Cool Stellar Disks, under the supervision of Jeremiah P. Ostriker. She was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study for the academic year 1977–1978 and then joined the solar physics group of the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. In addition, she was from 1980 to 2003 a professor at the University of Colorado.

#334

Amina Helmi

#43241

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Amina Helmi is an Argentine astronomer and professor at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Education Helmi was educated at Leiden University where she was awarded a PhD in 2000 with a thesis on the formation of the galactic halo, supervised by Tim de Zeeuw and Simon White.

#335

Gisela Anton

#37199

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Gisela Anton is a German experimental particle and astroparticle physicist. She was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 1994. Since 1995, she is a professor and Chair of Experimental Physics at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg.

#336

Chandralekha Singh

Chandralekha Singh

#76789

Overall Influence

Chandralekha Singh is an Indian-American physicist who is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh and the Founding Director of the Discipline-Based Science Education Research Center.

#337

Jacqueline Mitton

#88660

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Jacqueline Mitton is a British astronomer, writer, and media consultant who lives and works in Cambridge, UK. She studied at Somerville College, Oxford and Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. She has served as Public Relations Officer for the Royal Astronomical Society. From 1987 to 1993, she was the editor of the Journal of the British Astronomical Association. She has authored, co-authored, or contributed to many books.

#338

Nüzhet Gökdoğan

#16615

Overall Influence

1910 - 2003 (93 years)

Hatice Nüzhet Gökdoğan was a Turkish astronomer, mathematician and academic. After studying mathematics and astronomy in France as a young adult, Gökdoğan joined the faculty of Istanbul University in 1934 and completed her PhD. She was elected Dean of the university's Faculty of Science in 1954, becoming the first Turkish woman to serve as a university dean, and she was later made Chair of the astronomy department, significantly expanding her department's capacity and working to improve national and international collaboration between astronomers.

#339

Vera Kistiakowsky

Vera Kistiakowsky

#72002

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Vera Kistiakowsky was an American research physicist, teacher, and arms control activist. She was professor emerita at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the physics department and Laboratory for Nuclear Science, and was an activist for women's participation in the sciences. Kistiakowsky was an expert in experimental particle physics and observational astrophysics. She was the first woman appointed MIT professor of physics.

#340

Catherine Pilachowski

#89888

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Catherine Anderson Pilachowski is an American astronomer, professor and Kirkwood Chair in astronomy at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and former president of the American Astronomical Society.

#341

Sally Oey

#73185

Overall Influence

Dr. Sally Oey is an American astronomer at the University of Michigan and an expert in massive, hot stars which are often precursors to supernovae. In 1999, she was awarded the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society and, in 2006, was invited to give an address to the 206th meeting of the AAS. Oey is currently a professor and is a member of the board of the Gemini Observatory.

#342

Susana Lizano

#55910

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Estela Susana Lizano Soberón is a Mexican astrophysicist and researcher. She has specialized in the theoretical study of star formation. Studies and teaching Lizano earned a degree in physics at the School of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico . In 1984 she obtained a master's degree, and in 1988 a doctorate in astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1990 to 1991 she did postdoctoral work at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory.

#343

Miriani Griselda Pastoriza

#42448

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Miriani Griselda Pastoriza is an Argentine-born Brazilian astronomer, tenured professor in the Department of Astronomy of the Institute of Physics, at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, and is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

#344

Janet Luhmann

#76584

Overall Influence

Janet G. Luhmann is an American physicist and senior fellow of the Space Sciences Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley. She has made major contributions to a wide range of topics in planetary, solar, magnetospheric, and heliospheric physics. She is the principal investigator of the IMPACT instrument suite on the twin-spacecraft STEREO mission. IMPACT stands for In-situ Measurements of Particles and Coronal mass ejection Transients. It consists of a, "suite of seven instruments that samples the 3-D distribution of solar wind plasma electrons, the characteristics of the solar e...

#345

Daryl Haggard

#93874

Overall Influence

Daryl Haggard is an American-Canadian astronomer and associate professor of physics in the Department of Physics at McGill University and the McGill Space Institute. Early life and education Haggard was born in Seattle, Washington, the fifth of eight children, and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico at 6 months of age. Haggard's father was a mathematician and college professor. Her mother trained as biologist and owns a native plant nursery in Santa Fe.

#346

Reta Beebe

#80274

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Reta F. Beebe is an American astronomer, author, and popularizer of astronomy. She is an expert on the planets Jupiter and Saturn, and the author of Jupiter: The Giant Planet. She is a professor emeritus in the Astronomy Department at New Mexico State University and 2010 winner of the NASA Exceptional Public Service medal.

#347

Wanda Díaz-Merced

#72782

Overall Influence

Wanda Díaz-Merced is an astronomer best known for using sonification to turn large data sets into audible sound. She currently works at the European Gravitational Observatory Cascina, Italy. As someone who has lost their eyesight, she is a leader in increasing equality of access to astronomy and using audible sound to study astrophysical data. Wanda has been included in the list of the 7 most trailblazing women in science by the BBC.

#348

Karen Hallberg

#41567

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Karen Astrid Hallberg is an Argentine scientist and professor of physics at the Balseiro Institute. and at the Bariloche Atomic Centre. Se was awarded the 2019 L'Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science Laureate.

#349

Lee Anne Willson

#86296

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Lee Anne Willson is an American astronomer. Early life and education Lee Anne Willson was born on March 14, 1947, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Willson was interested in science from an early age. The daughter of a scientist, she spent her youth reading science fiction books. Her junior year of high school, she wanted to be an astronaut but she realized that this dream was impractical because she had poor vision, a crooked knee, and was female. Because she still wanted to learn about space, she decided that she wanted to be an astronomer instead.

#350

Sumathi Rao

#44009

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Sumathi Rao is an Indian theoretical physicist and professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru, working in the field of condensed matter physics. She is a former member of women in physics promotion of International Union of Pure and Applied Physics from 2000 to 2008.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions