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,

#901

Lisa M Diamond

#166555

Overall Influence

#902

Young-Suk Kim

#118147

Overall Influence

Young-Suk Kim is an educational psychologist known for her research on language and literacy development. She is Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine.

#903

Ingrid Schoon

#167227

Overall Influence

#904

Gerd Kvale

#159846

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Gerd Kvale is a Norwegian psychologist working on obsessive–compulsive disorder. She graduated as a Candidate of Psychology from the University of Bergen in 1982, and completed her Ph.D. in psychology in 1992. She was appointed professor in clinical psychology at the University of Bergen in 2002. Since 2011 she has been leading an obsessive–compulsive disorder project at the Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen. In 2015 she and her team received the Innovation of the Year in Psychological Science award from the Norwegian Society of Psychological Science.

#905

Athena Aktipis

#98834

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Christina Athena Aktipis is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. She is the director of the Interdisciplinary Cooperation Initiative and the co-director of the Human Generosity Project. She is also the director of the Cooperation and Conflict lab at Arizona State University, vice president of the International Society for Evolution, Ecology and Cancer , and was the director of human and social evolution and co-founder of the Center for Evolution and Cancer at UCSF. She is a cooperation theorist, an evolutionary biologist, an evolutionary psychologist, and a cancer biologist who works at the intersection of those fields.

#906

Virginia Valian

#101224

Overall Influence

Virginia Valian is an American psycholinguist, cognitive scientist, and theorist of male-female differences in professional achievement. Vallen is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College as well as a member of the doctoral faculties of Psychology, Linguistics, and Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center. She directs the Language Acquisition Research Center and the Gender Equity Project , both at Hunter College. For her work on gender equity, Valian received the 2006 Betty Vetter Award for Research from WEPAN . She became an elected member of the American Academy of Ar...

#907

Dare Baldwin

#151797

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Dare Ann Baldwin is a scientist known for her research on learning mechanisms and early social skills of infants and young children. Baldwin is a professor of psychology at Oregon University. Baldwin is the recipient of various awards including the 1994 Boyd McCandless Award from Division 7 of the American Psychological Association, 1995 John Merck Scholars Award, 1997 APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology, 2006-2007 James McKeen Cattell Sabbatical Fellowship, 2006 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 2006-2007 University of Oregon Fund for Facul...

#908

Helene Polatajko

#151771

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Helene J. Polatajko is an occupational therapy scholar, and Professor Emerita in the department of occupational science and occupational therapy at the University of Toronto's Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

#909

Victoria Plaut

#137462

Overall Influence

Victoria Caroline Plaut is a professor of law and social science at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studies the challenges and opportunities of multiculturalism and diversity. Her pioneering work has examined barriers faced by women in computer science, Whites' reactions to multiculturalism, and the myth of colorblindness in organizations. A noted expert on the causes and consequences of implicit bias, she has penned articles for venues such as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Scientific American; and served as an amicus curae to the U.S. Supreme Court.

#910

Sherry Pagoto

#149166

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Sherry Pagoto is a professor in the Department of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut and director of the UConn Center for mHealth and Social Media. A behavioural scientist and licensed clinical psychologist, she is an expert in leveraging technology, especially social media, to promote health behavior change with extensive research on the topics of obesity management and cancer prevention. She is the President of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

#911

Erika Hoff

#96060

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Erika Hoff is a developmental psychologist and an expert on language development and bilingualism. She is a professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University, where she directs the Language Development Laboratory.

#912

Maria Simon

#49105

Overall Influence

1918 - 2022 (104 years)

Maria Dorothea Simon was an Austrian psychologist and scholar of social work. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna near the end of the First World War, she was educated in Austria and Czechoslovakia but emigrated to London after the latter was annexed by Germany in 1938. While in the United Kingdom, she worked at the Hampstead Nurseries, an experimental child care centre run by the psychoanalyst Anna Freud. She was married to the jurist and resistance activist .

#913

Susan Kippax

#119252

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Susan Caroline Kippax is an Australian social psychologist and is Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales. Academic career Born in 1941, Kippax graduated from the University of Sydney with a BA . In 1970 she won a Rhodes Travelling Fellowship to study at the University of Oxford. She completed her PhD at the University of Sydney. Her thesis was titled Attitudes: A theory and experimental investigation of their complex nature.

#914

Amanda Sheffield Morris

#158641

Overall Influence

Amanda Sheffield Morris is an American developmental scientist, known primarily for her work on parenting, emotion regulation, and the neuroscience of adversity and resilience in terms of optimal child and adolescent development. She is currently the Regents Professor of Psychology at Oklahoma State University.

#915

Carole Peterson

#159403

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Carole L. Menig-Peterson is an American–Canadian child psychologist. She is a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland who specializes in early childhood memory. In 2012, Peterson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for pioneering narrative ability, eyewitness memory, and early childhood amnesia.

#916

Norma Graham

#130445

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Norma Van Surdam Graham is an American psychologist, neuroscientist and the Centennial Professor of Psychology at Columbia University. She has been a faculty member at Columbia since 1972. She has been elected to several scholarly societies, including the National Academy of Sciences.

#917

Claire Wiseman

#163182

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Claire V. Wiseman is an assistant clinical professor of psychology at the Yale School of Medicine and a practicing clinical Psychologist and researcher who specializes in eating disorders and adolescent body image.

#918

Joy Harden Bradford

#126489

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Joy Harden Bradford is an African American clinical psychologist based in Atlanta, Georgia. She is best known as the founder of a mental health platform called Therapy for Black Girls, which includes a podcast of the same name, that specializes in mental health issues relevant to Black women. As of 2019, the podcast's episodes have been downloaded over two million times.

#919

Lola Cuddy

#104639

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Lola L. Cuddy is a Canadian psychologist recognized for her contributions to the field of music psychology. She is a professor emerita in the Department of Psychology at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

#920

Rosalind Ridley

Rosalind Ridley

#69708

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Rosalind Ridley is a British psychologist and researcher who was head of the Medical Research Council Comparative Cognition Research Team in the Department of Psychology, Cambridge, UK, until 2005. She was a fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge from 1995–2010 and Vice-Principal from 2000–2005. She holds the privileges of a Fellow Emerita at Newnham College.

#921

Danièle Brun

#98195

Overall Influence

1938 - 2023 (85 years)

Danièle Brun was a French academic and psychologist. She was a member of the . Biography Brun first studied English and German at the University of Paris before completing her studies in psychology at Paris Diderot University and the University of Vincennes. She had also enrolled at Paris Descartes University.

#922

Joni Wallis

#93896

Overall Influence

Joni Wallis is a cognitive neurophysiologist and Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Education and early career Wallis received her Bachelors of Science in Psychology and Neuroscience from the University of Manchester in 1995. She received her PhD in Experimental Psychology and Anatomy from the University of Cambridge, where she worked in the laboratory of .

#923

Susan Meyer Markle

#122013

Overall Influence

1928 - 2008 (80 years)

Susan Meyer Markle was an American psychologist. She worked with B. F. Skinner on programmed instruction. Biography Susan Meyer Markle was born Susan Rogers on November 11, 1928, to Alden and Ruth Rogers. Considered a luminary of B.F. Skinner's teaching machine innovation, Markle worked as a researcher at his Harvard laboratory from 1956 to 1960.

#924

Caryn Lerman

#143646

Overall Influence

Caryn E. Lerman is an American psychologist. She is the director of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center through the Keck School of Medicine. Early life and education Lerman completed her Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from Pennsylvania State University in 1981 before moving to California and enrolling in the University of Southern California for her Master's degree and PhD.

#925

Harriet Holter

#29858

Overall Influence

1922 - 1997 (75 years)

Harriet Holter was a Norwegian social psychologist. Career She graduated with the cand.oecon. degree in 1946, and was eventually hired as a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Social Research, which was established in 1950.

#926

Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus

#158740

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus is a licensed clinical psychologist and professor with the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Rotheram is the professor-in-residence in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She is the Director of the Global Center for Children and Families at UCLA and the former director of the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services.

#927

Frühling Rijsdijk

#169154

Overall Influence

Frühling Vesta Rijsdijk is a Dutch behavior geneticist who is professor in Statistical and Behavioral Genetics at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, a school of King's College London. She received her PhD in behavior genetics from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She has developed structural equation modeling for use in behavioral genetic studies of twins and families. She received an HEA Senior Fellowship from King's in January 2019.

#928

Tracie O. Afifi

#89797

Overall Influence

Tracie O. Afifi is a Canadian research scientist. She is a Full professor in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair at the University of Manitoba. Early life and education Afifi completed her Bachelor of Science degree in 1999 at the University of Manitoba and remained at the institution for her Master of Science and PhD.

#929

Susan Rossell

#148423

Overall Influence

Professor Susan Rossell is a British researcher based at Swinburne University of Technology specialising in Neuropsychology and Neuroimaging. Originally from Nottingham, UK; she now resides in Melbourne, Australia. Her research on the neuropsychology of schizophrenia and body dysmorphic disorder is internationally recognised.

#930

Terezinha Nunes

#99134

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Terezinha Nunes is a British-Brazilian clinical psychologist and academic, specialising in children's literacy and numeracy, and deaf children's learning. Since 2005, she has been Professor of Educational Studies at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford.

#931

Valerie Purdie Greenaway

#66509

Overall Influence

Valerie Purdie Greenaway, who has also published under the surnames Purdie-Vaughns and Purdie, is an American social psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Columbia University. Her research interests include diversity, stereotypes and intergroup relations. She is one of the first African Americans to receive tenure in the academic sciences at Columbia University, and is credited with coining the term "intersectional invisibility".

#932

Marian Radke-Yarrow

#101347

Overall Influence

1918 - 2007 (89 years)

Marian Radke-Yarrow was an American child psychologist known for studying topics such as prejudice, altruism, and depression in children. She worked in academia in the early years after completing graduate school, and then she became a National Institute of Mental Health researcher who observed child behavior and parent-child interactions.

#933

Suzanne Lyn Barker-Collo

#170406

Overall Influence

Suzanne Lyn Barker-Collo is a New Zealand neuropsychology academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a 1997 PhD titled A Model of Posttraumatic Stress Reactions to Sexual Abuse in Females at Lakehead University in Canada, Barker-Collo moved to the University of Auckland, rising to full professor.

#934

Belinda Borrelli

#133805

Overall Influence

Belinda Borrelli is an American clinical psychologist specializing in smoking cessation. She is a Full Professor in the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine's Department of Health Policy and Health Services Research and director of Boston University's Behavioral Science Research.

#935

Kathleen McCartney

Kathleen McCartney

#168035

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Kathleen McCartney is an American academic administrator, who served as the 11th president of Smith College. She took office as Smith's president on June 2013. Smith College, located in Northampton, Massachusetts, is a liberal arts college and one of the Seven Sisters colleges. In February 2023, McCartney announced that she plans to retire at end of June 2023.

#936

Elizabeth Campbell

#158009

Overall Influence

1954 - 2010 (56 years)

Elizabeth Campbell was a clinical psychologist from Scotland, head of both the British Psychological Society, and also the European Federation of Psychology Associations. She was a specialist in developing training in clinical psychology.

#937

Maressa Orzack

#130432

Overall Influence

1924 - 2010 (86 years)

Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack was an American psychologist who was clinical associate in psychology at McLean Hospital; Coordinator of Behavior Therapy Affective Disease Program, also at McLean Hospital and assistant clinical professor of psychology, Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She also held private practice at Newton Centre.

#938

Krista R. Muis

#147193

Overall Influence

Krista Renee Muis is a Canadian professor and Canada Research Chair in epistemic cognition and self-regulated learning at McGill University. Muis was elected a member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada in 2018.

#939

Anne Christophe

#151024

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Anne Christophe is a French researcher working in the field of cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Ecole Normale Supérieure and of the Scientific Committee of National Education. She is also a former director of the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique at the Département d'études cognitives.

#940

Michelle Dawson

#27682

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Michelle Dawson is a Canadian autism researcher who was diagnosed with autism in 1993–1994. Since 2004, she has worked as an autism researcher affiliated with the Autism Specialized Clinic of Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

#941

Lisa Aspinwall

#168033

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Lisa G. Aspinwall is an American researcher and professor of Social Psychology and Health Psychology at the University of Utah. In 2000, she was honored as 2nd place recipient of the John Marks Templeton Positive Psychology Prize for her work on optimism and psychological resilience.

#942

Ruma Falk

#60511

Overall Influence

1932 - 2020 (88 years)

Ruma Falk was an Israeli psychologist and philosopher of mathematics known for her work on probability theory and human understanding of probability and statistics. Falk was born in Jerusalem, and educated at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She completed her PhD on the perception of chance at the Hebrew University in 1975 under the supervision of Amos Tversky, and became a professor there. She was married to Raphael Falk, a geneticist and historian of science.

#943

Marjorie Pyles Honzik

#144490

Overall Influence

1908 - 2003 (95 years)

Marjorie Knickerbocker Pyles Honzik was a developmental psychologist known for her longitudinal research on children's mental abilities, behavioral problems, and health outcomes. Honzik received the American Psychological Association G. Stanley Hall Award for Distinguished Contributions to Developmental Psychology in 1983. She was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1984.

#944

Lucia Albino Gilbert

#162683

Overall Influence

Lucia Albino Gilbert is a psychologist known for her research on gender equality and feminist psychology, with a specific focus on women's career development and families with dual careers. She is Professor Emerita of Educational Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin and Professor Emerita of Psychology at Santa Clara University.

#945

Simone Vigod

#157320

Overall Influence

Simone Natalie Vigod is a Canadian scientist, Head of the Department of Psychiatry at Women's College Hospital and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She focuses her research on perinatal mood disorders and has conducted some of the largest studies worldwide on maternal mental illness around the time of pregnancy.

#946

Gail Eskes

#131210

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Gail Eskes is a Canadian-American academic psychiatrist, and a professor of psychiatry at Dalhousie University. Career Eskes received her Bachelor of Arts in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1975. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy at the same university in 1981. She began her clinical training between 1993 and 2002 at Victoria General Hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

#947

Barbara Stanley

#103808

Overall Influence

1949 - 2023 (74 years)

Barbara H. Stanley was an American psychologist, researcher, and suicidologist who served as Professor of Psychology at Columbia University and the Director of Suicide Prevention Training at New York State Office of Mental Health. She also served as Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

#948

Constance Ahrons

#111872

Overall Influence

1937 - 2021 (84 years)

Constance Ruth Ahrons was an American psychotherapist. She was an early advocate of collaborative divorce. Biography Constance Ruth Ahrons was born on April 16, 1937, in Brooklyn, New York to immigrants Jacob and Estelle Ahrons. She attended Upsala College but dropped out when she married lawyer Jac Weiseman and had a baby. After reading The Feminine Mystique, she returned to Upsala and graduated in 1964. In 1967, she received her master's degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin. In 1967, she married therapist Morton Perlmutter.

#949

Nadya A. Fouad

#162214

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Nadya A. Fouad is an American vocational psychologist. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Vocational Behavior and distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

#950

Rivka Yahav

#114132

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Rivka Yahav is an academic psychotherapist, an academic faculty member of the School of Social Work, Head of the Psychotherapy Training Programme at Haifa University, and Head of the Interdisciplinary Clinical Center of the Faculty of Welfare and Health Sciences at Haifa University. She was awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Initiatives and Innovation in 2012.

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