The Most Influential People Across History
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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List of the most influential female people in Psychology,
#101
Anne Anastasi
#23569
Overall Influence
1908 - 2001 (93 years)
Anne Anastasi was an American psychologist best known for her pioneering development of psychometrics. Her generative work, Psychological Testing, remains a classic text in which she drew attention to the individual being tested and therefore to the responsibilities of the testers. She called for them to go beyond test scores, to search the assessed individual's history to help them to better understand their own results and themselves.
Go to Profile#102
Catherine Millot
#16064
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Catherine Millot is a French Lacanian psychoanalyst and author, professor of psychoanalysis at the University of Paris-VIII. Millot studied philosophy before turning to psychoanalysis. In 1971 she started an eight-year analysis with Lacan, and attended his seminars from 1971 until his death. Her thesis, turned into the book Freud anti-pédagogue, argued that pedagogy could not be based on psychoanalysis, since the role of analyst involved a radical openness to lack which was incompatible with the role of teacher. In 1975 she started teaching in the department of psychoanalysis at Paris VIII.
Go to Profile#103
Alice M. Isen
#16280
Overall Influence
Alice M. Isen was an American psychologist and Professor of Psychology and of Marketing at Cornell University. A prominent and widely published scholar, her research concerned the influence of "positive affect" on social interaction, thought processes, and decision making, including applications to organizational behavior, medical decision making, doctor-patient interaction, issues in services marketing, and issues related to brand equity and loyalty.
Go to Profile#104
Gail Carpenter
#14979
Overall Influence
Gail Alexandra Carpenter is an American cognitive scientist, neuroscientist and mathematician. She is now a "Professor Emerita of Mathematics and Statistics, Boston University." She had also been a Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems at Boston University, and the director of the Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems Technology Lab at Boston University.
Go to Profile#105
Rochel Gelman
#18434
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Rochel Gelman is an emeritus psychology professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Science. Gelman is married to fellow psychologist C. Randy Gallistel. Prior to joining the Rutgers faculty she taught at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Go to Profile#106
Margaret Donaldson
#31101
Overall Influence
1926 - 2020 (94 years)
Margaret Caldwell Donaldson was a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Donaldson was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where she gained a Ph.D. in 1956, and continued as a teacher after graduating. She traveled to Memphis Tennessee to guest-lecture and teach at Rhodes College during the 1962–1963 school year. In 1980, she was appointed professor of developmental psychology. Her main research interest has always been in the study of human thought and language. At Edinburgh, Professor Donaldson oversaw the development of research in developmental psychol...
Go to Profile#107
Patricia Devine
#14478
Overall Influence
Patricia Grace Devine is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she was the psychology department chair from 2009 to 2014. She was also the 2012 president of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
Go to Profile#108
Diana Baumrind
#6227
Overall Influence
1927 - 2018 (91 years)
Diana Blumberg Baumrind was a clinical and developmental psychologist known for her research on parenting styles and for her critique of the use of deception in psychological research. Early life and education Baumrind was born into a Jewish community in New York City, the first of two daughters of Hyman and Mollie Blumberg. She completed her B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy at Hunter College in 1948, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled "Some personality and situational determinants of behavior in a discussio...
Go to Profile#109
Tiffany Field
#15677
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Tiffany Martini Field is professor in the departments of pediatrics, psychology, and psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine and director of the Touch Research Institute. She specializes in infant development, especially with regard to the impact of maternal postpartum depression on mother-infant interaction and the efficacy of massage and touch therapy in promoting growth and emotional well-being in premature and low birth weight infants.
Go to Profile#110
Brené Brown
#6476
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Casandra Brené Brown is an American professor, author, and podcast host. Brown is known for her work on shame, vulnerability, and leadership, and for her widely viewed TEDx talk in 2010. She has written six number-one New York Times bestselling books and hosted two podcasts on Spotify.
Go to Profile#111
Ellen Winner
#21461
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Ellen Winner is a psychologist and a professor at Boston College. She specializes in psychology of art. Winner graduated from the Putney School in 1965 and received a PhD in developmental psychology from Harvard University in 1978. She collaborated on Project Zero to conduct studies about the way people experience and perceive art. Winner noted how psychological explorations beginning in the realm of philosophy pertained to art.
Go to Profile#112
Janet Taylor Spence
#16508
Overall Influence
1923 - 2015 (92 years)
Janet Allison Taylor Spence was an American psychologist who worked in the field of the psychology of anxiety and in gender studies. Early life Spence was born on August 29, 1923, in Toledo, Ohio. She was the older of two daughters. Her sister was born in 1927. Her father, John Chrichton, and her mother, Helen Taylor, were both active members of their community. Janet Taylor Spence's parents met in New York where John was working as a reporter and Helen was studying for a master's degree in economics at Columbia University. John joined the school board after running for governor, and Helen w...
Go to Profile#113
Ziva Kunda
#27306
Overall Influence
1955 - 2004 (49 years)
Ziva Kunda was an Israeli social psychologist and professor at the University of Waterloo known for her work in social cognition and motivated reasoning. Her seminal paper "The Case for Motivated Reasoning", published in Psychological Bulletin in 1990, posthumously received the Scientific Impact Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. Kunda authored the book Social Cognition: Making Sense of People.
Go to Profile#114
Kristin Neff
#22605
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Kristin Neff is an associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin's department of educational psychology. Dr. Neff received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, studying moral development. She did two years of postdoctoral study at the University of Denver studying self-concept development. She created the Self-compassion Scales. The long scale consists of 26 items and the short scale consists of 12 items. She has been credited with conducting the first academic studies into self-compassion.
Go to Profile#115
Ruth Westheimer
#2108
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (96 years)
Karola Ruth Westheimer , better known as Dr. Ruth, is a German-American who is a sex–therapist, talk show host, author, professor, and Holocaust survivor. Westheimer was born in Germany to a Jewish family. As the Nazis came to power, her parents sent the ten-year-old girl to a school in Switzerland for safety, remaining behind themselves because of her elderly grandmother. They were both subsequently sent to concentration camps by the Gestapo, where they were killed. After World War II ended, she immigrated to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. Despite being only 4 feet 7 inches tall and 17 years of age, she joined the Haganah, and was trained as a sniper, but never saw combat.
Go to Profile#116
Alice Eagly
#31325
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Alice H. Eagly is the James Padilla Chair of Arts and Sciences Emerita and emerita professor of psychology at Northwestern University. She is also a fellow at the Institute of Policy Research at Northwestern University. Her primary research focus is social psychology, as well as personality psychology and Industrial Organizational Psychology. She was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Go to Profile#117
Anita Woolfolk Hoy
#29305
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Anita Woolfolk Hoy is an American psychologist who specializes in child education. Hoy was a professor in the college of educational psychology at Ohio State University from 1994 until her retirement in 2012. She is a professor emerita. She has been active in many areas of research and several other scientific works, in which she focuses on students perceptions of teachers, teacher's beliefs, students motivations and the effects of educational psychology when being applied In the classroom. Her text, Educational Psychology, which is in its 13th edition, was recognized as one of the most widel...
Go to Profile#118
Valerie F. Reyna
#23909
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Valerie F. Reyna is an American psychologist and Professor of Human Development at Cornell University and an expert on false memory and risky decision making. In collaboration with her husband Charles Brainerd, Reyna developed fuzzy-trace theory, a dual-process model of mental representations underlying memory, judgement, and decision making. According to fuzzy-trace theory, there are two independent types of memory traces: a verbatim trace that records the exact details and a gist trace that extracts general features. Brainerd and Reyna used fuzzy-trace theory to provide a comprehensive acco...
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Annette Karmiloff-Smith
#16542
Overall Influence
1938 - 2016 (78 years)
Annette Karmiloff-Smith CBE FBA FMedSci was a professorial research fellow at the Developmental Neurocognition Lab at Birkbeck, University of London. Before moving to Birbeck, she was Head of the Neurocognitive Development Unit at Institute of Child Health, University College, London. She was an expert in developmental disorders, with a particular interest in Williams syndrome.
Go to Profile#120
Jacquelynne Eccles
#21835
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Jacquelynne Sue Eccles is an American educational psychologist. She is the Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine and formerly the McKeachie/Pintrich Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#121
Paula Caplan
#4331
Overall Influence
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Paula Joan Caplan was an American psychologist, activist, writer, and artist. Biography Caplan was an associate at Harvard University's DuBois Institute, director of the Voices of Diversity Project, and a past Fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Previously she had been full professor of psychology, assistant professor of psychiatry, and lecturer in Women's Studies at the University of Toronto, as well as head of the Centre for Women's Studies in Education there, and was chosen by the American Psychological Association as an "eminent woman psychologist".
Go to Profile#122
Diane F. Halpern
#15151
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Diane F. Halpern is an American psychologist and former president of the American Psychological Association . She is Dean of Social Science at the Minerva Schools at KGI and also the McElwee Family Professor of Psychology at Claremont McKenna College. She is also past-president of the Western Psychological Association, The Society for the Teaching of Psychology, and the Division of General Psychology.
Go to Profile#123
Eleanor Saffran
#30135
Overall Influence
1938 - 2002 (64 years)
Eleanor M. Saffran , an American neuroscientist, was a researcher in the field of Cognitive Neuropsychology. Her interest in Neuropsychology began at the Baltimore City hospitals of Johns Hopkins University, where her research unit focused on neurological patients with language or cognitive impairments. In papers published between 1976 and 1982, Dr. Saffran spelled out the methodological tenets of “cognitive neuropsychology” exemplified in her studies of aphasia, alexia , auditory verbal agnosia, and short-term memory impairment.
Go to Profile#124
Laurie R. Santos
#16788
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Laurie Renee Santos is an American cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Yale University. She is the director of Yale's Comparative Cognition Laboratory, Director of Yale's Canine Cognition Lab, and former Head of Yale's Silliman College. She has been a featured TED speaker and has been listed in Popular Science as one of their "Brilliant Ten" young scientists in 2007 as well as in Time magazine as a "Leading Campus Celebrity" in 2013.
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Jean Baker Miller
#10267
Overall Influence
1927 - 2006 (79 years)
Jean Baker Miller was a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, social activist, feminist, and author. She wrote Toward a New Psychology of Women, which brings psychological thought together with relational-cultural theory.
Go to Profile#126
Irene Pepperberg
#5437
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Irene Maxine Pepperberg is an American scientist noted for her studies in animal cognition, particularly in relation to parrots. She has been a professor, researcher and/or lecturer at multiple universities, and she is currently a research associate and lecturer at Harvard University. Pepperberg also serves on the Advisory Council of METI . She is well known for her comparative studies into the cognitive fundamentals of language and communication, and she was one of the first to work on language learning in animals other than human species , by extension to a bird species. Pepperberg is als...
Go to Profile#127
Beverly Daniel Tatum
#9969
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Beverly Christine Daniel Tatum is an American psychologist, administrator, and educator who has conducted research and written books on the topic of racism. Focusing specifically on race in education, racial identity development in teenagers, and assimilation of black families and youth in white neighborhoods. Tatum uses works from her students, personal experience, and psychology learning. Tatum served from 2002 to 2015 as the ninth president of Spelman College, the oldest historically black women's college in the United States.
Go to Profile#128
Jean Berko Gleason
#19237
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Jean Berko Gleason is an American psycholinguist and professor emerita in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University who has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of language acquisition in children, aphasia, gender differences in language development, and parent–child interactions.
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Nancy Segal
#20459
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Nancy L. Segal is an American evolutionary psychologist and behavioral geneticist, specializing in the study of twins. She is the Professor of Developmental Psychology and Director of the Twin Studies Center, at California State University, Fullerton. Segal was a recipient of the 2005 James Shields Award for Lifetime Contributions to Twin Research from the Behavior Genetics Association and International Society for Twin Studies.
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Ivana Markova
#15550
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Ivana Marková FBA is a Czech born social psychologist known for her work on language and the constructss of communication. Education and Academic career She was born in Czechoslovakia and studied philosophy and psychology at Charles University in Prague. In 1967 she moved to the United Kingdom. She initially worked as Research Fellow at Industrial Training Research Unit, University of London before moving to the University of Stirling, from which she retired in 2003 as an emeritus professor. She is the mother of Professor Ivana S. Marková, a distinguished psychiatrist in her own right.
Go to Profile#131
Dorothy V. M. Bishop
#35630
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Dorothy Vera Margaret Bishop is a British psychologist specialising in developmental disorders specifically, developmental language impairments. She is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, where she has been since 1998. Bishop is Principal Investigator for the Oxford Study of Children's Communication Impairments . She is a supernumary fellow of St John's College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#132
Temple Grandin
#1732
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Mary Temple Grandin is an American academic and animal behaviorist. She is a prominent proponent for the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter and the author of more than 60 scientific papers on animal behavior. Grandin is a consultant to the livestock industry, where she offers advice on animal behavior, and is also an autism spokesperson.
Go to Profile#133
K. Patricia Cross
#15008
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
Kathryn Patricia Cross was an American scholar of educational research. Throughout her career, she explored adult education and higher learning, discussing methodology and pedagogy in terms of remediation and advancement in the university system.
Go to Profile#134
Terrie E. Moffitt
#29351
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
#135
Marie de Hennezel
#23679
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Marie de Hennezel is a French psychologist, psychotherapist and writer. She is known for her commitment to improving conditions at the end of life. Her books, her two reports to the government, and her speeches on the subject have contributed to the evolution of the image of aging and old age in society.
Go to Profile#136
Francesca Happé
#22626
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Francesca Gabrielle Elizabeth Happé is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Director of the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London. Her research concerns autism spectrum conditions, specifically the understanding social cognitive processes in these conditions.
Go to Profile#137
Maria Kovacs
#22887
Overall Influence
Maria Kovacs is an American psychologist and academic. She is a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She is the developer of the Children's Depression Inventory.
Go to Profile#138
Linda B. Smith
#26391
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Linda B. Smith is an American developmental psychologist internationally recognized for her theoretical and empirical contributions to developmental psychology and cognitive science, proposing, through theoretical and empirical studies, a new way of understanding developmental processes. Smith's works are groundbreaking and illuminating for the field of perception, action, language, and categorization, showing the unique flexibility found in human behavior. She has shown how perception and action are ways of obtaining knowledge for cognitive development and word learning.
Go to Profile#139
Maggie Snowling
#27274
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Margaret Jean Snowling is a British psychologist, and world-leading expert in language difficulties, including dyslexia. From 2012 to 2022 she was President of St John's College, Oxford and Professor in the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford. Snowling was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2016 for services to science and the understanding of dyslexia. She was born in South Shields.
Go to Profile#140
Michelle Craske
#28622
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Michelle G. Craske is an Australian academic who is currently serving as Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Behavioral Sciences, Miller Endowed Chair, Director of the Anxiety and Depression Research Center, and Associate Director of the Staglin Family Music Center for Behavioral and Brain Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is known for her research on anxiety disorders, including phobia and panic disorder, and the use of fear extinction through exposure therapy as treatment. Other research focuses on anxiety and depression in childhood and adolescence and the use of cognitive behavioral therapy as treatment.
Go to Profile#141
Liane Gabora
#8659
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Liane Gabora is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia - Okanagan. She is known for her theory of the "Origin of the modern mind through conceptual closure," which built on her earlier work on "Autocatalytic closure in a cognitive system: A tentative scenario for the origin of culture."
Go to Profile#142
Judith S. Beck
#14989
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Judith S. Beck is an American psychologist who is best known for her work in cognitive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Her father is Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, with whom she has worked on many occasions. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982.
Go to Profile#143
Katy Milkman
#10464
Overall Influence
Katherine L. Milkman is an American economist who is the James G. Dinan endowed Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is the President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making.
Go to Profile#144
Elaine F. Walker
#37109
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Elaine F. Walker is a psychologist and professor whose research focuses on child and adolescent development, and changes in the brain due to adolescence. Other research interests includes the precursors and neurodevelopment aspects of schizophrenia and other serious mental disorders. She has taken part in writing over 250 articles and six books related to mental health and neuroscience. Walker is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Emory University.
Go to Profile#145
Myrna Weissman
#18888
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Myrna Milgram Weissman is Diane Goldman Kemper Family Professor of Epidemiology in Psychiatry at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and Chief of the Division of Translational Epidemiology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She is an epidemiologist known for her research on the prevalence of psychiatric disorders and psychiatric epidemiology, as it pertains to rates and risks of anxiety and mood disorders across generations. Among her many influential works are longitudinal studies of the impact of parental depress...
Go to Profile#146
Doreen Kimura
#28922
Overall Influence
1933 - 2013 (80 years)
Doreen Kimura was a Canadian psychologist who was professor at the University of Western Ontario and professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University. Kimura was recognized for her contributions to the field of neuropsychology and later, her advocacy for academic freedom. She was the founding president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship.
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Kimberly Young
#12154
Overall Influence
1965 - 2019 (54 years)
Kimberly Sue Young O'Mara was a psychologist and expert on Internet addiction disorder and online behavior. She founded the Center for Internet Addiction in 1995 while she was a psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. Until her death in 2019, Young was a professor of management at St. Bonaventure University. During her career, she published numerous journal articles and book chapters and served as an expert witness regarding her pioneer research including testimony for the Child Protection Online Act Congressional Committee. Young was a member of the American Psychol...
Go to Profile#148
Patricia Resick
#22220
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Patricia A. Resick is an American researcher in the field of post traumatic stress disorder. She is known for developing cognitive processing therapy. Biography After earning her doctorate from the University of Georgia in 1976, Resick served as Assistant to Associate Professor at the University of South Dakota, 1976-1980, and Associate to Full Professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, 1981–2003.
Go to Profile#149
Magda B. Arnold
#20835
Overall Influence
1903 - 2002 (99 years)
Magda Blondiau Arnold was a Canadian psychologist who was the first contemporary theorist to develop appraisal theory of emotions, which moved away from "feeling" theories and "behaviorist" theories toward the cognitive approach. She also created a new method of scoring the Thematic Apperception Test called Story Sequence Analysis.
Go to Profile#150
Elizabeth Moberly
#14314
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Elizabeth Moberly is a British research psychologist and theologian. Moberly is the author of Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic, in which she suggests several possible causes of male homosexuality and a therapeutic cure.
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