Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Psychology,

#51

Janet E. Helms

#11709

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

#52

Lauren Alloy

#15874

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Lauren B. Alloy is an American psychologist, recognized for her research on mood disorders. Along with colleagues Lyn Abramson and Gerald Metalsky, she developed the hopelessness theory of depression. With Abramson, she also developed the depressive realism hypothesis. Alloy is a professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

#53

Hanna Damasio

#4743

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Hanna Damasio is a scientist in the field of cognitive neuroscience. Using computerized tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, she has developed methods of investigating human brain structure and studied functions such as language, memory, and emotion, using both the lesion method and functional neuroimaging. She is currently a Dana Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Dana and David Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center at the University of Southern California.

#54

Deirdre Barrett

#6967

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Deirdre Barrett is an American author and psychologist known for her research on dreams, hypnosis and imagery, and has written on evolutionary psychology. Barrett is a teacher at Harvard Medical School, and a past president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams and of the American Psychological Association’s Div. 30, the Society for Psychological Hypnosis. She is editor-in-chief of the journal Dreaming: The Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams and a consulting editor for Imagination, Cognition, and Personality and The International Journal for Clinical and Ex...

#55

Teresa Amabile

#4006

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Teresa M. Amabile is an American academic who is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School. Biography Amabile is primarily known for her research and writing on creativity, dating to the late 1970s. Originally educated as a chemist, Amabile received her doctorate in psychology from Stanford University in 1977. She now studies how everyday life inside organizations can influence people and their performance. Her research encompasses creativity, productivity, innovation, and inner work life – the confluence of em...

#56

Jean Matter Mandler

#12309

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (95 years)

Jean Matter Mandler is Distinguished Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego and visiting professor at University College London. She was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1929 and attended Carleton College before transferring to Swarthmore College, where she graduated summa cum laude in 1951. She received her Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University in 1956. After a series of research positions – common for women in the 1950–1960s – at Harvard, the University of Toronto, and at UCSD, she became an associate professor at UCSD in 1973 and professor in 1977; she retired as a research professor in 2000.

#57

Robyn Fivush

#13197

Overall Influence

Robyn Fivush is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Emory University, College of Arts and Sciences in Atlanta, Georgia. She is well known for her research on parent-child narrative in relation to the development of autobiographical memory. Fivush is affiliated with the Departments of Psychology and Women's Studies at Emory.

#58

Amy Cuddy

#11473

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Amy Joy Casselberry Cuddy is an American social psychologist, author and speaker. She is a proponent of "power posing", a self-improvement technique whose scientific validity has been questioned. She has served as a faculty member at Rutgers University, Kellogg School of Management and Harvard Business School. Cuddy's most cited academic work involves using the stereotype content model that she helped develop to better understand the way people think about stereotyped people and groups. Though Cuddy left her tenure-track position at Harvard Business School in the spring of 2017, she continues...

#59

Mary Main

#8296

Overall Influence

1943 - 2023 (80 years)

Mary Main was an American psychologist notable for her work in the field of attachment. A Professor at the University of California Berkeley, Main is particularly known for her introduction of the 'disorganized' infant attachment classification and for development of the Adult Attachment Interview and coding system for assessing states of mind regarding attachment. This work has been described as 'revolutionary' and Main has been described as having 'unprecedented resonance and influence' in the field of psychology.

#60

May-Britt Moser

May-Britt Moser

#2670

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

May-Britt Moser is a Norwegian psychologist and neuroscientist, who is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology . She and her former husband, Edvard Moser, shared half of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded for work concerning the grid cells in the entorhinal cortex, as well as several additional space-representing cell types in the same circuit that make up the positioning system in the brain. Together with Edvard Moser she established the Moser research environment at NTNU, which they lead. Since 2012 she has he...

#61

Anat Ninio

#8229

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Anat Ninio is a professor emeritus of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She specializes in the interactive context of language acquisition, the communicative functions of speech, pragmatic development, and syntactic development.

#62

Sandra Bem

#7426

Overall Influence

1944 - 2014 (70 years)

Sandra Ruth Lipsitz Bem was an American psychologist known for her works in androgyny and gender studies. Her pioneering work on gender roles, gender polarization and gender stereotypes led directly to more equal employment opportunities for women in the United States.

#63

Shauna Shapiro

#18127

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Shauna L. Shapiro is a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University who works on mindfulness. Education Shapiro graduated summa cum laude from Duke University, and received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Arizona. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System She has received training in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and mindfulness based stress reduction, as well as studied mindfulness meditation in monasteries in Nepal and Thailand.

#64

Ruthellen Josselson

#13059

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Ruthellen Josselson is professor of clinical psychology at The Fielding Graduate University and a psychotherapist in practice. Work She was formerly a professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Towson University, a visiting professor at Harvard University and a visiting fellow at Cambridge University. Her research focuses on women's identity and on human relationships. She received the Henry A. Murray Award, the Theodore R. Sarbin Award and the Distinguished Contributions to Qualitative Research Award from the American Psychological Association as well as a Fulbright Fellowship. She ...

#65

Ellen S. Berscheid

#12907

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Ellen S. Berscheid is an American social psychologist who is currently a Regents professor at the University of Minnesota, where she earlier had earned her PhD in 1965. Berscheid conducted research on interpersonal relationships, emotions and moods, and social cognition. Berscheid wrote books, articles and other publications to contribute to the field of Social Psychology. She was involved in controversy surrounding the funding for her research on why people fall in love. In addition to her position at the University of Minnesota as a Psychology and Business professor; she has also held a position at Pillsbury.

#66

Susan Folkman

#12428

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Susan Kleppner Folkman is an American psychologist, author, and emerita professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco . She is internationally recognized for her contributions to the field of psychological stress and coping. Her 1984 book Stress, Appraisal and Coping alongside Richard S. Lazarus, is the most widely cited academic book in its field, and the 17th most cited book in social science.

#67

Elaine Hatfield

#11883

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Elaine Hatfield is an American social psychologist. She has been credited, alongside Ellen S. Berscheid, as the pioneer of the scientific study of love. She is employed as a professor in the psychology department of the University of Hawaii.

#68

Emőke Bagdy

#11123

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Emőke Bagdy is a Hungarian clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, professor emerita at the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary , and former director of the National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology. Her research, books, papers and talks focus on psychotherapy, health psychology and foundational problems of clinical psychology and clinical supervision.

#69

Eleanor J. Gibson

Eleanor J. Gibson

#11054

Overall Influence

1910 - 2002 (92 years)

Eleanor Jack Gibson was an American psychologist who focused on reading development and perceptual learning in infants. Gibson began her career at Smith College as an instructor in 1932, publishing her first works on research conducted as an undergraduate student. Gibson was able to circumvent the many obstacles she faced due to the Great Depression and gender discrimination, by finding research opportunities that she could meld with her own interests. Gibson, with her husband James J. Gibson, created the Gibsonian ecological theory of development, which emphasized how important perception was because it allows humans to adapt to their environments.

#70

Elizabeth Bates

#11032

Overall Influence

1947 - 2003 (56 years)

Elizabeth Ann Bates was a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. She was an internationally renowned expert and leading researcher in child language acquisition, psycholinguistics, aphasia, and the neurological bases of language, and she authored 10 books and over 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on these subjects. Bates was well known for her assertion that linguistic knowledge is distributed throughout the brain and is subserved by general cognitive and neurological processes.

#71

Lee Anna Clark

#14168

Overall Influence

Lee Anna Clark is an American psychologist and William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Professor of Psychology Emerite in the Department of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. She used to be a professor and collegiate fellow at the University of Iowa. She was, as of 2007, the director of clinical training in the Clinical Science Program. Prior to her appointment at the University of Iowa, she was a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Her research focuses on personality and temperament, clinical and personality asse...

#72

Bernice Neugarten

#12967

Overall Influence

1916 - 2001 (85 years)

Bernice Neugarten was an American psychologist who specialised in adult development and the psychology of ageing. Biography Neugarten was born to a Jewish family in Norfolk, Nebraska, where she spent her childhood and early teenage years. Neugarten started as an early undergraduate at the University of Chicago at the age of 16, obtaining her bachelor's degree in English and French Literature in 1936. She also obtained a Master's degree in Educational Psychology master's degree in educational psychology and her Ph.D. in human development. In 1960, Neugarten was the first person at the Univer...

#73

Marilynn Brewer

#18123

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Marilynn B. Brewer is an American social psychologist. She is professor emeritus of psychology at Ohio State University and resides in New South Wales. She was formerly Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute for Social Science Research at UCLA.

#74

Muriel Lezak

#22226

Overall Influence

1927 - 2021 (94 years)

Muriel Elaine Deutsch Lezak was an American neuropsychologist best known for her book Neuropsychological Assessment, widely accepted as the standard in the field. Her work has centred on the research, assessment, and rehabilitation of brain injury. Lezak was a professor of neurology at the Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine.

#75

Margie Holmes

#12762

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Margarita Go-Singco Holmes, popularly known as Dr. Margie Holmes, is a popular psychologist specializing in sex therapy in the Philippines. Education Holmes graduated with a degree in Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of the Philippines Diliman in 1973. She was one of only seven people to graduate magna cum laude among more than two thousand who graduated that year. Holmes was adjudged "most outstanding graduate" for 1973 by the University of the Philippines Alumni Association.

#76

Myrna Gopnik

#13229

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Myrna Lee Gopnik is a Canadian linguist. She is a professor emerita of linguistics at McGill University. She is known for her research on the KE family, an English family with several members affected by specific language impairment.

#77

Nancy McWilliams

#11603

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D., ABPP., is emerita visiting professor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University. She has written on personality and psychotherapy. McWilliams is a psychoanalytic/dynamic author, teacher, supervisor, and therapist. She has a private practice in psychotherapy and supervision in Lambertville, New Jersey. She is a former president of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association .

#78

Evelyn Hooker

#6873

Overall Influence

1907 - 1996 (89 years)

Evelyn Hooker was an American psychologist most notable for her 1956 paper "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual" in which she administered several psychological tests to groups of self-identified male homosexuals and heterosexuals and asked experts to identify the homosexuals and rate their mental health. The experiment, which other researchers subsequently repeated, argues that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, as there was no detectable difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in terms of mental adjustment.

#79

Melanie Joy

#5447

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Melanie Joy is an American social psychologist and author, primarily notable for coining and promulgating the term carnism. She is the founding president of nonprofit advocacy group Beyond Carnism, previously known as Carnism Awareness & Action Network , as well as a former professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She has published the books Strategic Action for Animals, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows and Beyond Beliefs.

#80

Margaret Wetherell

#10598

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Margaret Wetherell is a prominent academic in the area of discourse analysis. Career Wetherell worked for 23 years at the Open University, UK from which she retired as Emeritus Professor in 2011. She then took up a part-time post of Professor in Psychology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

#81

Esther Thelen

#14310

Overall Influence

1941 - 2004 (63 years)

Esther Thelen was an expert in the field of developmental psychology. Thelen's research was focused on human development, especially in the area of infant development. Thelen was also president of the Society for Research in Child Development and the International Society for Infant Studies. She was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Psychological Society.

#82

Hazel Rose Markus

#15067

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Hazel June Linda Rose Markus is an American social psychologist and a pioneer in the field of cultural psychology. She is the Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University in Stanford, California. She is also a founder and faculty director of Stanford SPARQ, a "do tank" that partners with industry leaders to tackle disparities and inspire culture change using insights from behavioral science. She is a founder and former director of the Research Institute of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity . Her research focuses on how culture shapes mind and behavior.

#83

Margo Wilson

#19529

Overall Influence

1942 - 2009 (67 years)

Margo Wilson was a Canadian evolutionary psychologist. She was a professor of psychology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, noted for her pioneering work in the field of evolutionary psychology and her contributions to the study of violence.

#84

Deirdre Wilson

#5911

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Deirdre Susan Moir Wilson, FBA is a British linguist and cognitive scientist. She is emeritus professor of Linguistics at University College London and research professor at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo. Her most influential work has been in linguistic pragmatics—specifically in the development of Relevance Theory with French anthropologist Dan Sperber. This work has been especially influential in the Philosophy of Language. Important influences on Wilson are Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, and Paul Grice. Linguists and philosophers of language who have been...

#85

Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı

#13377

Overall Influence

1940 - 2017 (77 years)

Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı was a Turkish scientist and professor. She was a university professor since 1969 and received the APA Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology in 1993.

#86

Roos Vonk

#21260

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Roosje Vonk is a Dutch professor of social psychology at the Radboud University in Nijmegen author, and motivational speaker. Life and work Vonk studied psychology at Leiden University. She received her PhD in 1990 for her dissertation The cognitive representation of persons: A multidimensional study of Implicit Personality Theory, impression formation, and person judgments. In 1999 she became professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen. In addition to her work at the university, she popularized psychology by means of books, articles, and lectures for the general public.

#87

Eleanor Duckworth

#10987

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Eleanor Ruth Duckworth is a teacher, teacher educator, and psychologist. Duckworth earned her Ph.D. at the Université de Genève in 1977. She grounds her work in Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder's insights into the nature and development of understanding and intelligence and in their clinical interview method. Duckworth also has been an elementary school teacher. Her participation in the 1960s curriculum development projects Elementary Science Study and African Primary Science Program was germinal for her insights and practices in exploratory methods in teaching and learning. She has conducted...

#88

Angela Duckworth

Angela Duckworth

#10024

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Angela Lee Duckworth is an American academic, psychologist, and popular science author. She is the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies grit and self-control. She is also the Founder and former CEO of Character Lab, a not-for-profit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development.

#89

Sian Beilock

#10022

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Sian Leah Beilock is a cognitive scientist who is the current president of Dartmouth College. Previous to serving at Dartmouth College, Beilock was the eighth president of Barnard College, the undergraduate women's college of Columbia University. As President of Barnard, she was also an academic dean within Columbia University. Beilock spent 12 years at the University of Chicago, departing Chicago as the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology and Executive Vice Provost. She holds doctorates of philosophy in both kinesiology and psychology from Michigan State University.

#90

Leona E. Tyler

#26902

Overall Influence

1906 - 1993 (87 years)

Leona Elizabeth Tyler was an American psychologist and president of the American Psychological Association in 1973. Early years Leona Tyler was born in Chetek, Wisconsin on May 10, 1906. Her father, Leon M. Tyler was an accountant and house restoration contractor and her mother, Bessie J. Carver Tyler managed the home. Both her parents graduated high school, but neither attended college.

#91

Eleanor Maccoby

#19187

Overall Influence

1917 - 2018 (101 years)

Eleanor Emmons Maccoby was an American psychologist who was most recognized for her research and scholarly contributions to the fields of gender studies and developmental psychology. Throughout her career she studied sex differences, gender development, gender differentiation, parent-child relations, child development, and social development from the child perspective.

#92

Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel

#15472

Overall Influence

1928 - 2006 (78 years)

Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel was a leading French psychoanalyst, a training analyst, and past President of the Société psychanalytique de Paris in France. From 1983 to 1989, she was Vice President of the International Psychoanalytical Association. Chasseguet-Smirgel was Freud Professor at the University College, London, and Professor of Psychopathology at the Université Lille Nord de France. She is best known for her reworking of the Freudian theory of the ego ideal and its connection to primary narcissism, as well as for her extension of this theory to a critique of utopian ideology.

#93

Elizabeth Warrington

#23169

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Elizabeth Kerr Warrington FRS is a British neuropsychologist specialised in the study of dementia. She holds a PhD in Psychology visual processing and is now an emeritus professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University College London. She formerly worked as the Head of the Department of Neuropsychology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery where she is also a member of the Dementia Research Centre. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1986.

#94

Shelly Chaiken

#21074

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Rochelle Lynne "Shelly" Chaiken is an American social psychologist. She first received her BS from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1971 for mathematics. She later earned her MS and her PhD at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in social psychology. She was a professor of psychology at New York University, but is now retired.

#95

Ursula Bellugi

#11641

Overall Influence

1931 - 2022 (91 years)

Ursula Bellugi was an American cognitive neuroscientist. She was a Distinguished Professor Emerita and director of the Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. She is known for research on the neurological bases of American Sign Language and language representation in people with Williams Syndrome.

#96

Ruth M. J. Byrne

Ruth M. J. Byrne

#15085

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Ruth M.J. Byrne, FTCD, MRIA, is an Irish cognitive scientist and author of several books on human reasoning. She is the Professor of Cognitive Science, in the School of Psychology and Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin. She is the former Vice Provost of Trinity College Dublin.

#97

Susan Michie

#19846

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Susan Fiona Dorinthea Michie is a British academic, clinical psychologist, and professor of health psychology, director of The Centre for Behaviour Change and head of The Health Psychology Research Group, all at University College London. She is also an advisor to the British Government via the SAGE advisory group on matters concerning behavioural compliance with government regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, she was appointed Chair of the World Health Organisation’s Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health.

#98

Christa Neuper

#16409

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Christa Neuper is a psychologist who graduated from the University of Graz. Christa Neuper was the first woman in the 426 years of history of the University of Graz to be its rector . After her doctorate in 1984, Neuper worked on the research and teaching at the Institute of Psychology, from the University of Graz and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, from the Graz University of Technology. In 2002 Christa Neuper completed her free docency at the University of Graz, where in 2005 she was named professor of applied psychology and human-machine interfaces. Neuper was named in various man...

#99

Angela D. Friederici

Angela D. Friederici

#15366

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Angela Friederici is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and is an internationally recognized expert in neuropsychology and linguistics. She is the author of over 400 academic articles and book chapters, and has edited 15 books on linguistics, neuroscience, language and psychology.

#100

Suzanne Corkin

#11535

Overall Influence

1937 - 2016 (79 years)

Suzanne Corkin was an American professor of neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. She was a leading scholar in neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience. She is best known for her research on human memory, which she studied in patients with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and amnesia. She is also well known for studying H.M., a man with memory loss whom she met in 1962 and studied until his death in 2008.

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