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

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Psychology,

#501

Batja Mesquita

#99138

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Batja Mesquita is a Dutch social psychologist, a cultural psychologist and an affective scientist. She is a professor of psychology at the University of Leuven, Belgium, where she studies the role of culture in emotions, and of emotions in culture and society. She is director of the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology in Leuven.

#502

Eugenia Mandal

#48880

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Eugenia Mandal is a Polish social psychologist, holder of a postdoctoral degree in Psychology . She is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Silesia, Poland. A supervisor of the Department of Social and Environmental Psychology.

#503

Carol Nagy Jacklin

#90546

Overall Influence

1939 - 2011 (72 years)

Carol Nagy Jacklin was a developmental psychologist and gender scholar. She was the first woman to be dean of the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Southern California. She was a Women's Rights activist.

#504

Krystyna Skarżyńska

#96114

Overall Influence

Professor dr. hab. Krystyna Skarżyńska is Polish psychologist, professor of humanities, holding the positions of full professor at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities and the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, expert in political psychology and social psychology.

#505

Patricia Cheng

#36916

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Patricia Wenjie Cheng is a Chinese American psychologist. She is a leading researcher in cognitive psychology who works on human reasoning. She is best known for her psychological work on human understanding of causality. Her "power theory of the probabilistic contrast model," or power PC theory posits that people filter observations of events through a basic belief that causes have the power to generate their effects, thereby inferring specific cause-effect relations.

#506

Joy Osofsky

#82658

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Joy D. Osofsky is a clinical and developmental psychologist, known for her research on infant mental health, how parents nurture their infants and children, and the repercussions that follow exposure to traumatic events and violence. Some of her notable work has examined the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina, experiences of children raised in broken households, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities. Osofsky is employed as a Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Public Health at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, and she is Head of the Division of Pediatric Mental Health at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine.

#507

Maryanne Garry

#79750

Overall Influence

Maryanne Connell-Covello Garry is a New Zealand educational psychology academic. As of mid-2018, she is a full professor at the University of Waikato. Garry is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

#508

Jane Wardle

#79794

Overall Influence

1950 - 2015 (65 years)

Jane Wardle FBA FMedSci was a professor of clinical psychology and director of the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre at University College London. She was one of the pioneers of health psychology in the UK and internationally, known for her seminal work on the contribution of psychology to public health, particularly the role of psychological research in cancer prevention and work on the behavioural and genetic determinants of eating behaviour and obesity.

#509

Ursula Staudinger

Ursula Staudinger

#73362

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Ursula M. Staudinger is a German psychologist and researcher of aging. She is the rector of the Technical University of Dresden . She was Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Professor of Psychology at the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University. Between 2013 and 2017 Staudinger was the founding director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center and president of the affiliated International Longevity Center.

#510

Jo-Ida Hansen

#85232

Overall Influence

Jo-Ida C. Hansen is a counseling psychologist known for her research on career and work planning and measurement of vocational interests. She is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the American Counseling Association, and the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology

#511

Lonnie Carton

#31073

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Lonnie Carton is a family therapist and an educational consultant best known for "The Learning Center", a long-running daily feature on CBS Radio which provided strategies for successful parenting. Biography Carton was born in Baltimore on August 25, 1930. She grew up in Baltimore and attended Johns Hopkins University, getting her bachelor's degree in 1950. She later received a PhD from Pennsylvania State University in 1959.

#512

Margaret Beale Spencer

#63482

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Margaret Beale Spencer is an American psychologist whose work centers on the effects of ethnicity, gender, and race on youth and adolescent development. She currently serves as the Marshall Field IV Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. Dr. Spencer's career spans more than 30 years and consists of over 115 published articles and chapters, stemming from work funded by over two-dozen foundations and federal agencies.

#513

Zakiah Daradjat

#86993

Overall Influence

1926 - 2013 (87 years)

Zakiah Daradjat was an Indonesian Islamic psychologist, educator, and professor of psychology at the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta. Early life Zakiah Daradjat was born in Koto Marapak, Agam, Dutch East Indies, on 6 November 1926. Her father, Daradjat Husain was known as an activist in the Muslim organization Muhammadiyah and her mother, Rafi'ah was active in Sarekat Islam. Husain had two wives; there were six children he got from his first wife, and from his second wife, Rasunah, he got five children, Zakiah being the oldest. Even though her parents did not come from an...

#514

Rada Granovskaya

Rada Granovskaya

#96910

Overall Influence

1929 - 2022 (93 years)

Rada Mikhailovna Granovskaya was a well-known psychologist, professor of the Saint Petersburg State University; academician of the Baltic Academy of Pedagogical Sciences and the International Academy of Acmeology. Her basic works are on practical psychology and psychological protection. She is an author of conceptual model of interaction of thinking of the person with system of the subconscious and realized psychological barriers, and also mechanisms and ways of their overcoming.

#515

Trudie Chalder

#59931

Overall Influence

Trudie Chalder is Professor of Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy at the Institute of Psychiatry in King's College London. Life Chalder was president of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies and Director of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust’s Persistent Physical Symptoms Service.

#516

Kaarin Anstey

#103297

Overall Influence

Kaarin Anstey is an Australian Laureate Fellow and one of Australia's top dementia scientists. She is Co-Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research at the University of New South Wales, Australia, where she is Scientia Professor of Psychology. Kaarin Anstey is an Honorary Professor at the Australian National University and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She is a Director of the NHMRC Dementia Centre for Research Collaboration, Senior Principal Research Scientist at NeuRA and leads the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Cogn...

#517

Karestan Koenen

#104221

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Karestan Chase Koenen is an American epidemiologist and Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also the head of the Global Neuropsychiatric Genomics Initiative of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute. She is a fellow of the American Psychopathological Association and a former president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. In 2015, she received the Robert S. Laufer, PhD, Memorial Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

#518

Sarah Boysen

#74298

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Sarah Till "Sally" Boysen is a professor of psychology at Ohio State University. Boysen is a primate researcher and former Director of the Chimp Center at the university. She was selected as the one of the top 50 women scientists by Discover magazine in 2002.

#519

Marjolein Visser

#108000

Overall Influence

#520

Dawn Freshwater

#19496

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Dawn Freshwater is a British academic, university professor, mental health researcher, and the incumbent Vice-Chancellor of the University of Auckland. Early life and education Freshwater was born in a mining family in Nottingham, with two younger brothers. She left school at the age of 15 because her parents became unwell. Freshwater trained as a nurse and was the first member of her family to attend university. Her doctoral research investigated the impact of transformative learning on nursing students for which she awarded a PhD by the University of Nottingham in 1998.

#521

Jelena Obradovic

#101185

Overall Influence

Jelena Obradovic is a developmental psychologist who currently works as associate professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she is a member of the Steering Committee of the Center for Education Policy Analysis . She also directs the Stanford Project on Adaptation and Resilience in Kids .

#522

Kathleen McDermott

#85265

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Kathleen McDermott is Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. She is known for her research on how human memory is encoded and retrieved, with a specific interest in how false memories develop. In collaboration with Henry L. Roediger III, she developed the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm used to study the phenomenon of memory illusions. McDermott received the 2004-2005 F.J. McGuigan Young Investigator Prize for research on memory from the American Psychological Foundation and the American Psychological Association's Science Directorate. She was recognized by the Association for Psychological Science as a Rising Star in 2007.

#523

Lara Aknin

#19877

Overall Influence

Lara Beth Aknin is a Canadian social psychologist. She is an assistant professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University and a distinguished university professor. Career After earning her PhD from the University of British Columbia, Aknin joined the faculty of psychology at Simon Fraser University in 2012. That year, she published "Giving Leads to Happiness in Young Children" with J. Kiley Hamlin and Elizabeth Dunn, which supported the idea that humans may have evolved to find giving rewarding.

#524

Stacey Sinclair

Stacey Sinclair

#97187

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Stacey Sinclair is an American psychologist and professor of psychology and public affairs, and associate professor of African American studies at Princeton University. Her research focuses on how interpersonal interactions translate culturally held prejudices into individual thoughts and actions.

#525

Anne-Françoise Rutkowski

#75597

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Anne-Françoise Rutkowski is a French psychologist and Professor Management of Information: Impact on Organization, Business and Society at the Tilburg University School of Economics and Management. known for her work on virtual collaboration.

#526

Elizabeth Dunn

#99827

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Elizabeth Warren Dunn is a Canadian social psychologist and a Professor of Social Psychology at the University of British Columbia . In 2015, Dunn was elected a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists within the Royal Society of Canada.

#527

Ravenna Helson

#62388

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (99 years)

Ravenna Mathews Helson was an American psychologist known for her research on the psychology of women and creativity. Dacher Keltner has described her as "a pioneer in the study of women's lives". Career Helson completed her PhD in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1952. She joined the faculty of psychology at Smith College, but moved with her husband, mathematician Henry Helson, back to California in 1955 when he was offered a faculty position at UC Berkeley. Helson began working at the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research in 1957, when she accepted an invitation from director Donald W.

#528

Judy Garber

#98438

Overall Influence

Judy Garber is a clinical psychologist known for her research on emotional dysregulation and mood disorders, with a focus on cognitive-behavioral interventions for adolescents who have depression. Garber is Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University.

#529

Susan J. Kelley

#74691

Overall Influence

Susan J. Kelley is the former Dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences at Georgia State University. She is also currently a professor of Nursing and the Director of the National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, and founder and director of Project Healthy Grandparents, at Georgia State University.

#530

Mare Teichmann

#70532

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Mare Teichmann is an Estonian psychologist and academic. Biography Mare Teichmann was born 1 March 1954, in Tallinn. She holds a PhD in Psychology from the Behterev Institute Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg. Mare Teichmann is Professor of Psychology, and founder of Chair of Psychology ; founder and director of Institute of Industrial Psychology at Tallinn University of Technology . She is a member of many boards and councils, especially in the academic self-administration of her specialty in Work and Organizational Psychology; her current positions include but are not limited to: membership...

#531

Toni Falbo

#74307

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Toni Falbo is a social psychologist known for her research on power dynamics in relationships, sibling status, and development of only children. She is a professor of Educational Psychology and Faculty Research Affiliate of the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

#532

Barbara A. Cornblatt

#69231

Overall Influence

Barbara A. Cornblatt is Professor of Psychiatry and Molecular Medicine at Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine. She is known for her research on serious mental disorders, with a specific focus on psychosis and schizophrenia. Her efforts to find treatments to help youth with mental illness led to the development of the Recognition and Prevention Program, which she founded in 1998.

#533

Patricia Carpenter

#92900

Overall Influence

Patricia A. Carpenter is a psychologist who, as of 1997, held the Lee and Marge Gregg Professorship of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Carpenter has studied individual variability in working memory, comprehension rates in speed reading, and how brain function during complex cognitive tasks appears in functional magnetic resonance imaging. With Marcel Just, she coauthored The Psychology of Reading and Language Comprehension .

#534

Serena Chen

#100047

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Serena Chen is an American social psychologist known for her work on the self and interpersonal relationships. She is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and currently serves as Chair of the Psychology Department. Her research utilizes a social-cognition framework and has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other news outlets.

#535

Pauleen Bennett

Pauleen Bennett

#48466

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Pauleen Charmayne Bennett is an Australian scientist researching anthrozoology at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia. Bennett's research in the field of human-animal interactions has informed government policy and covered areas of: human attitudes, health and behaviour; ethics of animals in society; animal behaviour, physiology and welfare. Her research interest lies in understanding the diverse psychological connections between humans and animals, particularly companion animals, positive psychology, and in the use of animals in human health therapies.

#536

Bloeme Evers-Emden

#35398

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Bloeme Evers-Emden was a Dutch lecturer and child psychologist who extensively researched the phenomenon of "hidden children" during World War II and wrote four books on the subject in the 1990s. Her interest in the topic grew out of her own experiences during World War II, when she was forced to go into hiding from the Nazis and was subsequently arrested and deported to Auschwitz on the last transport leaving the Westerbork transit camp on 3 September 1944. Together with her on the train were Anne Frank and her family, whom she had known in Amsterdam. She was liberated on 8 May 1945.

#537

Clara E. Hill

#110353

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Clara E. Hill is an American professor of psychology specializing in counseling psychology, dreamwork, and psychotherapy research. She has served as a faculty member at the University of Maryland, College Park since 1974. Hill was the 1995 president of the Society for Psychotherapy Research and editor of the Journal of Counseling Psychology from 1994 to 1999.

#538

Marianne Schmid Mast

Marianne Schmid Mast

#82461

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Marianne Schmid Mast is a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Biography Marianne Schmid Mast was born in Olten and did her primary school in Däniken, Solothurn. When she was 10, her family moved to Oberkulm and she went to Bezirksschule Unterkulm and then to Handelsschule in Aarau. After receiving her business diploma, she completed her Matura in economics at the École Supérieure de Commerce in Neuchâtel. She worked for a computer company for a year, and later on she spent half a year traveling in Brazil.

#539

Judith Kleinfeld

#46096

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Judith Smilg Kleinfeld is a professor of psychology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and co-chairs the Northern Studies department. A controversial academician, her most well known works are the ones criticizing studies on alleged discrimination in educational settings. Her The Myth That Schools Shortchange Girls analyzed the American Association of University Women's report How Schools Shortchange Girls. Kleinfeld's analysis was first publicized at the Women's Freedom Network, received national attention and was covered by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

#540

Michela Gallagher

#105003

Overall Influence

Michela Gallagher is an American cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist. She is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. Her scientific work has changed the model of neurocognitive aging, and developed new indices for its study. Previously, work had focused on neurodegeneration as a primary cause of memory loss.

#541

Elizabeth A. Phelps

Elizabeth A. Phelps

#62843

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Elizabeth Anya Phelps is the Pershing Square Professor of Human Neuroscience at Harvard University in the Department of Psychology. She is a cognitive neuroscientist known for her research at the intersection of memory, learning, and emotion. She was the recipient of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society Distinguished Scholar Award and the 21st Century Scientist Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, as well as other honors and awards in her field. Phelps was honored with the 2018 Thomas William Salmon Lecture and Medal in Psychiatry at the New York Academy of Medicine. She r...

#542

Lynn Okagaki

#62860

Overall Influence

Lynn Okagaki is deputy provost for academic affairs at the University of Delaware. She was appointed to this position in January 2016, after serving as interim since July 2015. As chief advisor to the Provost and a member of the senior leadership team for the University of Delaware, Okagaki oversees a number of academic and administrative units. Her major responsibilities include academic program planning and review, working with the Faculty Senate and deans to establish and review academic programs, working with the colleges in the design and delivery of general education, and overseeing the ...

#543

Priscilla K. Coleman

#53914

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Priscilla Kari Coleman is a retired Professor of Human Development and Family Studies in the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at Bowling Green State University, Ohio. She is the author of a number of disputed academic papers, which claim to have found a statistical correlation or causal relationship between abortion and mental health problems.

#544

Diana Reiss

#59204

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Diana Reiss is a professor of psychology at Hunter College and in the graduate program of Animal Behavior and Comparative Psychology at the City University of New York. Reiss's research has focused on understanding cognition and communication in dolphins and other cetaceans. Her important contributions include demonstrating mirror self-awareness in dolphins via the Mirror test.

#545

Connie Kasari

#103185

Overall Influence

Connie Kasari is an expert on autism spectrum disorder and a founding member of the Center for Autism Research and Treatment at the University of California, Los Angeles . Kasari is Professor of Psychological Studies in Education at UCLA and Professor of Psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She is the leader of the Autism Intervention Research Network for Behavioral Health, a nine-institution research consortium.

#546

Mavis Tsai

#78427

Overall Influence

Mavis Tsai is a psychologist and author. She is a senior research scientist at the University of Washington. She is one of the creators of functional analytic psychotherapy . Tsai is the director specializing in FAP at the University of Washington's Psychological Services and Training Center. Her books have been translated to Korean, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Persian.

#547

Helen Haste

#91425

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Helen Elizabeth Haste , also known as Helen Weinreich-Haste, is a British social, developmental, and cultural psychologist and a writer and broadcaster. She is a visiting professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Bath. Haste also holds honorary visiting positions at the University of Exeter, the Hong Kong Institute of Education, and the University of Jinan China.

#548

BJ Casey

#51896

Overall Influence

BJ Casey is an American cognitive neuroscientist and expert on adolescent brain development and self control. She is the Christina L. Williams Professor of Neuroscience at Barnard College of Columbia University where she directs the Fundamentals of the Adolescent Brain Lab and is an Affiliated Professor of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School, Yale University.

#549

Katya Rubia

#86796

Overall Influence

Katya Rubia is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre and Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, both part of the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.

#550

Karen Henwood

#103196

Overall Influence

Karen Henwood is a British social psychologist and Professor of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, and an expert on identity and risk, particularly socio-cultural and environmental change. Her research in recent years includes the ESRC project "Timescapes" on relationships and identities through the life course, and a project on men as fathers, as well as research on energy use, sustainable development, climate change policy and on living with nuclear risk. She was editor-in-chief of Qualitative Research from 2016 to 2019.

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