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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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Psychology,

#701

Gail Gillon

#74563

Overall Influence

Gail Therese Gillon is a New Zealand child development academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Canterbury and is a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi. Academic career After a 1995 PhD at titled 'The phonological, semantic and syntactic skills of children with specific reading disability' at the University of Queensland, she moved to the University of Canterbury, rising to full professor.

#702

Fei Xu

#103590

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Fei Xu is an American developmental psychologist and cognitive scientist who is currently a professor of psychology and the director of the Berkeley Early Learning Lab at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on cognitive and language development, from infancy to middle childhood.

#703

Angela R. Laird

#131726

Overall Influence

#704

Lea Waters

#105870

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Lea Waters is an Australian psychologist, speaker, author and researcher. She is a psychology professor at the University of Melbourne and was the founding director of the Centre for Positive Psychology in the University of Melbourne. In addition, she has affiliate positions at University of Michigan and sits on the Science Board of The University of California and Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. Her main areas of research are positive psychology, organisational psychology, education, leadership and parenting.

#705

Tonya M. Palermo

#113191

Overall Influence

Tonya M. Palermo is an American pediatric psychologist. She is a professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the University of Washington. She holds the Hughes M. and Katherine Blake Endowed Professorship in Health Psychology, at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

#706

Pip Pattison

#114209

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Philippa Eleanor "Pip" Pattison is a quantitative psychologist who retired in December 2021 as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Education at the University of Sydney. She is now an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne.

#707

Sabine Kastner

#79748

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Sabine Kastner is a German-born American cognitive neuroscientist. She is professor of psychology at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute at Princeton University. She also holds a visiting scientist appointment at the University of California at Berkeley.

#708

Deniz S. Ones

#132196

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

#709

Laura H. Goldstein

#96797

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Laura H. Goldstein is Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at King's College London, and Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Lishman Unit, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

#710

Denise C. Park

#129559

Overall Influence

Denise C. Park is an American neuroscientist. She is the head of the Aging Mind Lab, the Principal Investigator of the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study , and a Distinguished University Chair of the School and Behavioral and Brain Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas.

#711

Hannah Steinberg

Hannah Steinberg

#89532

Overall Influence

1926 - 2019 (93 years)

Hannah Steinberg was a pioneer of experimental psychopharmacology, the study of the interaction of drugs on the human mind. Early life Steinberg was born in Vienna to the lawyer Michael Steinberg and his wife Marie . They arranged for her to leave Vienna in 1938 and she was one of the first Jewish children to travel on the Kindertransport. and arrived in London where she was educated at Putney High School and Queen Anne's School, Caversham. After studying for a Certificate in Commerce at Reading University and then at Denton Secretarial College she changed course. After beginning a degree in...

#712

Edith de Leeuw

#105512

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Edith Desiree de Leeuw is a Dutch psychologist, statistician, research methodologist, and professor in survey methodology and survey quality, at the University of Utrecht. She is known for her work in the field of survey research.

#713

Geraldine Downey

#126612

Overall Influence

Geraldine A. Downey is an Irish-American social psychologist. She is the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters in Psychology at Columbia University. Downey is head of The Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Center on Corporate Governance and is a member of the University of the People's arts and sciences advisory board.

#714

Frances Degen Horowitz

#84519

Overall Influence

1932 - 2021 (89 years)

Frances Degen Horowitz was an American developmental psychologist who served as President of the Graduate Center, City University of New York from 1991 to 2005. She was instrumental in raising the stature of the institution and moving it to its current location in the B. Altman and Company Building on Fifth Avenue of New York City.

#715

Martina Ziefle

#133620

Overall Influence

#716

Harriet Wadeson

#85214

Overall Influence

1931 - 2016 (85 years)

Harriet Claire Wadeson Ph.D., LCSW, ATR-BC, HLM was a pioneer in the art therapy profession, as well as an accomplished author, researcher, and educator, who established and directed the Art Therapy Graduate Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Art Therapy Certificate Program at Northwestern University where she taught up to her passing. She was the author of 8 books on art therapy and over 70 articles in professional journals. She was an international guest lecturer, and educator who has presented papers, led professional delegations, and conducted workshops in 14 count...

#717

Elaine Reese

#74230

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Jeanne Elaine Reese is an American-New Zealand psychology academic. Academic career After a PhD at Emory University on early-childhood literacy, Reese moved to the University of Otago, where she rose to full professor in 2012. Reese has received four Marsden grants from the Royal Society of New Zealand.

#718

Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart

#37699

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart is a Native American social worker, associate professor and mental health expert. She is best known for developing a model of historical trauma for the Lakota people, which would eventually be expanded to encompass indigenous populations the world over. She is Hunkpapa/Oglala Lakota.

#719

Mandy Morgan

#119319

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Catherine Amanda Morgan is a New Zealand feminist psychology academic, as of 2019 is a full professor at the Massey University. Academic career After a 1992 PhD titled 'Strange attractions : discourse, narrative and subjectivity in social psychology' at Murdoch University, Morgan moved to the Massey University, rising to full professor in 2013.

#720

Carolyn M. Mazure

#105522

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Carolyn M. Mazure is an American psychologist and the Norma Weinberg Spungen and Joan Lebson Bildner Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. She created and directs Women’s Health Research at Yale — Yale’s interdisciplinary research center on health and gender.

#721

Lisa Bowleg

#86006

Overall Influence

Lisa Bowleg is an applied social psychologist known for conducting research on intersectionality in social and behavioral science and the relationship between social-contextual factors and stress, resilience, and HIV risk in Black communities.

#722

Juliet Popper Shaffer

#63775

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Juliet Popper Shaffer is an American psychologist, statistician and statistics educator known for her research on multiple hypothesis testing. She is a teaching professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley.

#723

Annette Beautrais

#117976

Overall Influence

Annette Louise Beautrais is a New Zealand suicidologist. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, where she formerly directed the Canterbury Suicide Project prior to leaving in 2009 because some of her grant applications for a research project and a suicide coordinator at Canterbury were rejected. Beautrais has a PhD from the University of Otago, completed in 1996. She is also affiliated with the University of Canterbury School of Health Sciences and is a senior research fellow at the University of Auckland's South Auckland Clinical School. She is also the W...

#724

Linda Waimarie Nikora

Linda Waimarie Nikora

#117359

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Linda Waimarie Nikora is a New Zealand psychology academic. She is Māori, of Te Aitanga a Hauiti and Ngāi Tūhoe descent. She is currently professor of Indigenous Studies and co-director of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga at the University of Auckland, having moved in 2017 from the University of Waikato where she had been a professor of psychology and the founding Director of the Maori & Psychology Research Unit in the School of Psychology.

#725

Hortensia Amaro

#79889

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Hortensia Amaro is a Cuban-American educator, and formerly Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University and Associate Vice Provost of Community Research and Dean's Professor of Social Work and Preventative Medicine at the University of Southern California. Amaro was born in Cuba and moved to Los Angeles, California as a child. From a young age, she recognized that there was a demand for public health services in her area, particularly by immigrants and minorities. Amaro assisted in the development and implementation of numerous treatment and prevention models as well as the creation and ...

#726

Elizabeth Kensinger

#115280

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Elizabeth Kensinger is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College. She is known for her research on emotion and memory over the human lifespan. She is co-author of the book Why We Forget and How To Remember Better: The Science Behind Memory, published in 2023 by Oxford University Press, which provides an overview of the psychology and neuroscience of memory. She also is the author of the book Emotional Memory Across the Adult Lifespan, which describes the selectivity of memory, i.e., how events infused with personal significance and emotion are much more memorable than nonemotional events.

#727

Celeste Kidd

#101073

Overall Influence

Celeste Kidd is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She was amongst the "Silence Breakers" who were named Time Person of the Year in 2017. Early life and education Kidd studied print journalism and linguistics at the University of Southern California, where she earned a dual honors degree in 2007. Kidd moved to the University of Rochester for her graduate studies, where she worked in brain and cognitive studies and earned her PhD in 2013. She worked with Richard N. Aslin, an expert on infant learning. Kidd held visiting positions at Stanford University and the ...

#728

Priscilla Alderson

#135647

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

#729

Thérèse Gouin Décarie

Thérèse Gouin Décarie

#60790

Overall Influence

1923 - Present (101 years)

Thérèse Gouin-Décarie is a Canadian developmental psychologist and educator living in Quebec. She is known for her work on intellectual and emotional development in young children. Biography Gouin-Décarie was born in Montreal, Quebec on September 30, 1923, to Yvette Ollivier, an artist and playwright, and Léon-Mercier Gouin, a lawyer, professor, and Canadian senator. She studied psychology at the Université de Montréal, earning a bachelor's degree in 1945 and a master's degree in 1947. She pursued clinical training at the Centre d'orientation in Montreal , at the Children's Center in Boston , and at the Centre médico-pédagogique at the Université de Paris .

#730

Mary C. Zanarini

#135760

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

#731

Lisa Goodman

#103055

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Lisa A. Goodman is an American counseling psychologist known for her research on domestic violence and violence against women. She is Professor of Counseling Psychology at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. Goodman is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Division of Counseling Psychology.

#732

Carolyn Goodman

Carolyn Goodman

#66413

Overall Influence

1915 - 2007 (92 years)

Carolyn Elizabeth Goodman was an American clinical psychologist who became a prominent civil rights advocate after her son, Andrew Goodman and two other civil rights workers, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in 1964.

#733

Miranda Wolpert

#76961

Overall Influence

Miranda Wolpert, Lady Sales is professor of evidence-based practice and mental health at University College London. She was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 New Year Honours for her work on young people's mental health. She is Director of Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust.

#734

Jessica Payne

#117984

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Jessica D. Payne is a psychologist and associate professor at the University of Notre Dame. Payne's research focuses on the impact of sleep and stress on human memory and psychological well-being. Payne won the Early Career Award from the Psychonomic Society in 2015. Previously, she received the Laird Cermak Award for early contribution to memory research by the International Neuropsychological Society in 2010. Payne has contributed her expertise on sleep to media outlets including New York Times, CNN, and Huffington Post.

#735

Maya Bar-Hillel

#38608

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Maya Bar-Hillel is a professor emeritus of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Known for her work on inaccuracies in human reasoning about probability, she has also studied decision theory in connection with Newcomb's paradox, investigated how gender stereotyping can block human problem-solving, and worked with Dror Bar-Natan, Gil Kalai, and Brendan McKay to debunk the Bible code.

#736

Carmen Sandi

#91534

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Carmen Sandi is a Spanish and Swiss behavioral neuroscientist. She is a professor of neuroscience and director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics at the Brain Mind Institute . Early life and education Born and raised in Torrelavega , Spain, Sandi moved to Salamanca to obtain her BS and MS from the University of Salamanca in 1984 and further to Madrid for her PhD at the Cajal Institute and the Autonomous University of Madrid in 1988. She continued her postdoctoral research at INSERM, Bordeaux, France and Open University, UK .

#737

Stefania Maggi

#136380

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

#738

Kristina Hooper Woolsey

#52580

Overall Influence

Dr. Kristina Hooper Woolsey is an American scholar and cognitive scientist known as the "mother of multimedia" for her pioneering work at the Apple Multimedia Lab and Atari Research Labs, which she directed. Woolsey was a founding member of the Apple Human Interface Group.

#739

Lorraine Sherr

#137368

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

#740

Susan Brady

#115526

Overall Influence

Susan Brady is an American psychologist and literacy expert who is a professor of school psychology at the University of Rhode Island. For many years, she led the Haskins Literacy Initiative at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut which promotes the "science of teaching reading." She has been a leading researcher in the area of reading acquisition for over thirty years and has been involved with efforts to improve state and national policy on the teaching of reading including speaking before a U.S. Senate committee.

#741

Jillian Roberts

#56760

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Jillian Roberts is a Canadian child psychologist, author, speaker, and Professor at the University of Victoria. Born in British Columbia, Roberts obtained degrees from the University of Waterloo , Dalhousie University , the University of Toronto , and the University of Calgary . Her doctoral work was about children with HIV/AIDS. In 1999, she assumed a faculty position in educational psychology at the University of Victoria.Roberts' Just Enough series of children's books was released in 2016. She followed this with the series World Around Us.

#742

Debra Titone

#130603

Overall Influence

Debra Titone is a cognitive psychologist known for her research on bilingualism and multilingualism. She is currently a Professor of Psychology and a chair holder of Canada Research in Language & Multilingualism at McGill University. Titone is a founding member and officer of the professional society, Women in Cognitive Science. She and her colleagues have written about gender disparities in opportunities, along with the advancement of women the field of cognitive science, with specific reference to Canada.

#743

Mona Weissmark

#103571

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Mona Sue Weissmark is an American clinical psychologist and social psychologist, whose work on the inter-generational impact of injustice has received international recognition. She is best known for her groundbreaking social experiment of bringing children of Holocaust survivors face-to-face with children of Nazis, and later, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of African American slaves with slave owners. She is also a professor of psychology at Northwestern University and author of numerous journal articles and three books: Doing Psychotherapy Effectively and Justice Matters: Legacies of...

#744

Sharon Oviatt

#118985

Overall Influence

Sharon Oviatt is an internationally recognized computer scientist, professor and researcher known for her work in the field of human–computer interaction on human-centered multimodal interface design and evaluation.

#745

Carol Kulik

#110975

Overall Influence

Carol T. Kulik is an Australia-based researcher who focuses on line managers, human resources, and diversity & inclusion. She is a Research Professor of Human Resource Management and a senior researcher within the Centre for Workplace Excellence at the University of South Australia. She is co-author of Human Resources for the Non-HR Manager .

#746

Elizabeth Zelinski

#60400

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Zelinski is an American college professor known for her expertise in gerontechnology, neuroscience, and cognition. She is the Rita and Edward Polusky Chair in Education and Aging Professor of Gerontology and Psychology at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and she heads the Center for Digital Aging. Zelinski studies longitudinal changes in objective cognition and self-reported memory in healthy older adults, interventions to improve their cognition and health effects on cognition in aging.

#747

Elizabeth M. Brannon

#83742

Overall Influence

Elizabeth M. Brannon is an American neuroscientist. She serves as Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Chair in the Natural Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Brannon's research, focused on comparative cognition, numerical cognition, and educational neuroscience, has earned an h-index of 68.

#748

Sohee Park

#118356

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

#749

Pat Michie

#93172

Overall Influence

Patricia Therese Michie is Emeritus Professor of Psychology, and co-director of the Schizophrenia Program of the Priority Research Centre in Translational Neuroscience and Mental Health at the University of Newcastle.

#750

Antje Meyer

#110246

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Antje Susanne Meyer is a German-Dutch experimental psychologist, known for her work in language production. She is currently one of the scientific directors of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and also a professor of individual differences in language processing at Radboud University.

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