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,

#1151

Nicola Starkey

#183729

Overall Influence

Nicola Jayne Starkey is a New Zealand psychology academic. She is currently a full professor at the University of Waikato. Academic career After a 2000 PhD titled 'Ethological and pharmacological examination of social behaviour in gerbils ' at the University of Leeds, she moved to the University of Waikato, rising to full professor.

#1152

Makeba Wilbourn

Makeba Wilbourn

#170237

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Makeba Parramore Wilbourn is an American developmental psychologist and professor at Duke University in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. She studies how children acquire knowledge. She was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Barack Obama. This is the highest honor bestowed on early career scientists in the US.

#1153

Patricia Jennings

#158165

Overall Influence

Patricia A. Jennings is a Professor of Education at the University of Virginia. Education and early career Patricia A. Jennings received a BA from Antioch College in 1977, an M.Ed. from Saint Mary's College in 1980, and a Ph.D. from the University of California Davis in 2004. Before her degrees in education and human development, Jennings also studied Buddhism at the Buddhist Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and later founded a Montessori school that taught meditation during the late 1980s.

#1154

Guusje ter Horst

#108138

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Guus "Guusje" ter Horst is a retired Dutch politician of the Labour Party and psychologist. She is a member of the supervisory board of Royal Dutch Shell since 1 January 2013 and chairwoman of the supervisory board of the Institute for Sound and Vision since 11 July 2011.

#1155

Felicia Hill-Briggs

#183565

Overall Influence

Felicia Hill-Briggs was an American behavioral and social scientist. Early life and education Hill-Briggs was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of nine. She received her bachelor's degree in psychology from American University and her doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology and Health Psychology from Pennsylvania State University. Following this, she completed her internship in Medical Consultation and Liaison and Clinical Neuropsychology at New York University Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Geropsychology and Geriatric Neuropsychology at...

#1156

Annette Gough

#109512

Overall Influence

Annette Elizabeth Gough OAM is an Australian science and environmental education scholar and Professor Emerita in the School of Education at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. She is a pioneer of the environmental education movement in Australia. Gough is known for her critical analysis of the history of the field and for introducing a gender dimension in environmental education research. Although best known for this work, Gough has also made important contributions to science education, research methodology and gender studies.

#1157

Carmen L. Rivera-Medina

#165279

Overall Influence

Carmen L. Rivera-Medina is a Puerto Rican psychologist, statistician, and methodologist. She is an instructor at University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus where she works as a statistician and methodologist in the Institute for Psychological Research.

#1158

Carolyn M. West

#168818

Overall Influence

Carolyn Marie West is associate professor of psychology , at the University of Washington Tacoma, and was the first holder of the Bartley Dobb Professorship for the Study and Prevention of Violence .

#1159

Gisela Kaplan

#33765

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Gisela Kaplan is an Australian ethologist who primarily specialises in ornithology and primatology. She is a professor emeritus in animal behaviour at the University of New England, Australia, and also honorary professor of the Queensland Brain Institute.

#1160

Joanna Shapland

#86247

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Joanna Shapland was born in 1950. She earned her B.A. from St. Hilda’s College, which was promoted to an M.A. She went on to earn a diploma in criminology from Darwin College before earning a PhD from Wolfson College. She has spent her career studying victimology and victimisation, exploring the restorative justice approaches employed by police officers and crime reduction programs, and engaging in longitudinal research into the life choices of adult offenders in their early twenties. Her efforts have yielded critically important insights into effective practices for restorative justice. She h...

#1161

Susan Krauss Whitbourne

#130449

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Susan Krauss Whitbourne is a developmental clinical psychologist known for her work on personality and identity over the lifespan. She holds the position of Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

#1162

Geraldine Wright

#75077

Overall Influence

Geraldine Wright is an insect neuroethologist in the United Kingdom. In 2018 she became the Professor of Comparative Physiology/Organismal Biology at the University of Oxford and in 2021 she was appointed Hope Professor of Zoology.

#1163

Sara Wilford

#30138

Overall Influence

1932 - 2021 (89 years)

Sara Delano Wilford was a psychologist who taught at Sarah Lawrence College from 1982 to 2014. Early life Sara Delano Roosevelt was a daughter of Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney, a philanthropist in medicine and art, and businessman James Roosevelt, the oldest son of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Wilford's adoptive father was John Hay Whitney.

#1164

Betsy Thom

#185226

Overall Influence

Betsy Thom is a British sociologist and Professor of Health Policy in the Department of Mental Health & Social Work at Middlesex University. She is known for her works on substance abuse and substance use policy. She is the head of the Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at Middlesex University

#1165

Lesley Hoyles

#180906

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Lesley Hoyles is a Welsh microbiologist who is Professor of Microbiome and Systems Biology at Nottingham Trent University. She combines in vivo and in vitro microbiology and bioinformatics research to better understand how the gut microbiota influences health and disease.

#1166

Monica Baskin

#73429

Overall Influence

Monica Baskin is an American psychologist who is a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research considers health disparities in the Deep South. She serves as Director of Community Outreach and Engagement at the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center.

#1167

Marina Butovskaya

#50925

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Marina Butovskaya is a Russian ethologist and cultural anthropologist. Life She was born in the Soviet Union in the city of Cherkassy , she earned a Master of Arts degree from Moscow State University in 1982. She was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree by the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1986, and a Doctor of Science degree by the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1994.

#1168

Suzanne Pitama

#133921

Overall Influence

Suzanne Georgina Pitama is a New Zealand academic, is Māori, of Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Whare descent and as of 2020 is a full professor at the University of Otago in Christchurch, New Zealand. Early life Pitama was educated at Wairoa College, and qualified in psychology at University of Auckland. She then undertook postgraduate and doctoral studies at Massey University and the University of Otago.

#1169

Kerry Gibson

#182128

Overall Influence

Kerry Lynn Gibson is a South African-New Zealand clinical psychologist and academic, specialising in youth mental health. She is a professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland. Gibson was the president of the New Zealand Psychological Society, from 2014 until 2016.

#1170

Tracy Dennis-Tiwary

#170341

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

Tracy Dennis-Tiwary is an American clinical psychologist, author, health technology entrepreneur, and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of The City University of New York. Her research explores emotion regulation and its role in mental health and illness, with a particular focus on anxiety and anxiety-related attention biases, as well as child emotional development. She is known for her nuanced view of the impact of digital technology and social media on psychological well-being in youth and adults, including adjustment, relationship quality, a...

#1171

Erika H. James

#150459

Overall Influence

Erika H. James is an American academic and businesswoman. She is the dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is both the first woman and the first Black person to lead the business school. James is known for her crisis leadership and workplace diversity research. James was named dean of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in February 2020. Her term began on July 1 of the same year.

#1172

Caryl Rusbult

#186157

Overall Influence

2010 - 2010 (0 years)

Caryl E. Rusbult was a professor and chair of the Department of Social and Organizational Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She died from uterine cancer on January 27, 2010. Rusbult received her B.A. in Sociology from UCLA and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . During her time as a professor at Chapel Hill she made seminal contributions to theoretical social psychology including the investment model of commitment processes, a theoretical model of accommodation processes, and the Michelangelo effect.

#1173

Zoe R. Donaldson

#171110

Overall Influence

Zoe R. Donaldson is an American neuroscientist and assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Donaldson explores the neurobiological and genetic mechanisms of social bonding and social behavior in rodents. Her work will help to elucidate how variations in genetics and circuit activity across the population predispose certain individuals to mental illness. Donaldson is a pioneer in the use of the monogamous prairie voles to study social behaviors and has been developing novel genetic tools, since her graduate work at Emory University, to study voles in the lab to better understa...

#1174

Marié Wissing

#184551

Overall Influence

Marié Philliphina Wissing is a South African clinical psychologist, who is a professor at the Africa Unit for Transdisciplinary Health Research at the North-West University in South Africa. She became a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa in 2018.

#1175

Chanita Hughes-Halbert

#170628

Overall Influence

Chanita Ann Hughes-Halbert is an American psychologist and medical researcher. She is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina and the AT&T Distinguished Endowed Chair for Cancer Equity at the Hollings Cancer Center. She is the first woman and first African American from South Carolina elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

#1176

Marilyn Fain Apseloff

#124401

Overall Influence

1934 - 2018 (84 years)

Marilyn Fain Apseloff was an American author and a professor at Kent State University, known for her study of children's literature. Early life and education Apseloff was born Marilyn Fain in 1934 in Attleboro, Massachusetts to Arthur and Eve Fain. Apseloff received her bachelor's degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1956, and her master's degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1957. She also completed a fellowship at the University of Cincinnati in 1957. Her formal introduction to children's literature began when her husband urged her to take a class at Kent State University, wh...

#1177

Roxane Maranger

#181084

Overall Influence

Roxane Maranger is a professor at Université de Montréal and Canada Research Chair Tier I in Aquatic Ecosystem Science and Sustainability known for her research on the impact of humans on water quality in lakes. From July 2020 - July 2022, she served as the president of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography .

#1178

Silvia Sara Canetto

#161258

Overall Influence

Silvia Sara Canetto is a psychologist known for her research in diversity issues related to suicidal behaviors, aging, and end of life. She is a professor of applied social health psychology, and counseling psychology at Colorado State University .

#1179

Zella Luria

#178263

Overall Influence

1924 - 2018 (94 years)

Zella Luria was an American psychologist and feminist known for her work on the development of gender identity and sexuality across the life course. Her work helped to shift the field towards a cognitive approach that emphasized the social construction of gender and the active role of children in such construction.

#1180

Fiona Kumari Campbell

Fiona Kumari Campbell

#49442

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

Fiona Kumari Campbell is a disability studies researcher and theorist, focusing on disability in relation to law, technology, advocacy, and desire. She is currently Professor of Disability and Ableism Studies in the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Dundee, Scotland and adjunct professor in Disability Studies with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. She is the author of Contours of Ableism.

#1181

Lois Surgenor

#186456

Overall Influence

Lois J. Surgenor is a New Zealand clinical psychologist and academic. Her research focuses on eating disorders and traumatic brain injury. As of 2021 she is a full professor at the University of Otago.

#1182

Elizabeth McDermott

#142092

Overall Influence

Elizabeth McDermott is a Professor of Health Inequality at Lancaster University, in England. Her research considers mental health inequality, with a focus on gender, social class and young people. Early life and education McDermott earned her doctoral degree at the Lancaster University, where she studied the influence of lesbian identity and social class on wellbeing. She was a postdoctoral researcher on a project that looked to understand how people affected by cancer understood end of life issues.

#1183

Rebeccah Slater

#70727

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (46 years)

Rebeccah Slater is a British neuroscientist and academic. She is professor of paediatric neuroscience and a senior Wellcome Trust research fellow at the University of Oxford. She is also a professorial fellow in Neuroscience at St John's College.

#1184

Beverly Greene

#183011

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Beverly Greene is a professor in the Department of Psychology at St. John's University. She is a clinical psychologist known for her work on sexism, racism, and analyzing the intersectionality of social identities. As a specialist in the psychology of women and of gender and racial issues in the practice of psychotherapy, Greene has also created many public health frameworks for understanding mental health in marginalized communities. She is the author of close to 100 psychological literature publications. Greene is involved with the Association for Women in Psychology and the Society for the Psychology of Women.

#1185

Helena Cooper-Thomas

#184440

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (55 years)

Helena D. Cooper-Thomas is a New Zealand organisational behaviour academic. She is currently a full professor at the Auckland University of Technology. Academic career After a Masters at the University of Saskatchewan, she completed a PhD at Goldsmith College, University of London and then worked in industry for Shell. She rejoined academia at the University of Auckland before moving to Auckland University of Technology.

#1186

Cat Hobaiter

#158761

Overall Influence

Catherine Hobaiter is a British primatologist focusing on social behaviour in wild chimpanzees and involved in long-term studies of chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda. She is particularly interested in the role gestures play in communication. She is a lecturer at the University of St Andrews.

#1187

Sultana Zaman

#168335

Overall Influence

1932 - 2020 (88 years)

Sultana Zaman was a Bangladeshi psychologist, academic, and philanthropist. She was the founder of Bangladesh Protibandhi Foundation , an organization for the mentally disabled people. She was awarded Begum Rokeya Padak in 2008 by the Government of Bangladesh.

#1188

Cindy Meston

#182654

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Cindy Meston is a Canadian-American clinical psychologist well-known for her research on the psychophysiology of female sexual arousal. She is a Full Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, Director of the Female Sexual Psychophysiology Laboratory, and author of Why Women Have Sex . In 2016, the BBC, London, England named Meston one of the 100 most influential and inspirational women in the world.

#1189

Jillianne Code

#180197

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (49 years)

Jillianne Reay Code is a Canadian researcher and learning scientist. She is an associate professor in the faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia and director of the Assessment for Learning in Immersion and Virtual Environments research lab.

#1190

Daphne C. Watkins

#173739

Overall Influence

Daphne C. Watkins, is an author, researcher, executive coach, and professor who studies behavioral health interventions for historically marginalized groups, mixed methods approaches to research in context, and leadership development/organizational management.

#1191

Nenagh Kemp

#183978

Overall Influence

Nenagh M. Kemp is a psychologist with the University of Tasmania. She is a specialist in the acquisition, development and use of spoken and written language. She is the associate editor for the Journal of Research in Reading and for Reading and Writing. She is a member of the editorial board of Scientific Studies of Reading.

#1192

Marjolein Lips-Wiersma

#113745

Overall Influence

Marjolein Silvia Lips-Wiersma is a New Zealand academic. She specializes in ethics, meaningful work and sustainability. She is currently a full professor at the Auckland University of Technology. Academic career Marjo Lips-Wiersma is Professor of Ethics and Sustainability Leadership at AUT. In 1999 she submitted a doctoral thesis titled The influence of 'spiritual meaning-making' on career choice, transition and experience at the University of Auckland. Her research takes place at the nexus of meaningful work, sustainability, hope and well-being.

#1193

Stacy Blake-Beard

#102136

Overall Influence

Stacy Blake-Beard has a BS in Psychology from the University of Maryland, an MA and a Ph.D. in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan. Since 2002, Blake-Beard has been teaching organizational behavior at the Simmons College School of Management and is currently a tenured Professor of Management. Before Blake-Beard joined Simmons, she was Assistant Professor of Administration, Planning, and Social Policy at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. At HGSE she lectured on organizational behavior, cultural diversity in organizations, and mentoring relationships at w...

#1194

Wendy Loretto

#185445

Overall Influence

Wendy Loretto is the Dean and Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the University of Edinburgh Business School and an expert in later-life employment. Education Loretto holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Edinburgh. After graduation, she worked as a commercial manager at Marks & Spencer. For three years she worked at the Alcohol Research Group at the University of Edinburgh, where she received her PhD in research on the social and cultural aspects of illicit and legal drug use by young people.

#1195

Ana Abraido-Lanza

#123034

Overall Influence

Ana Abraído-Lanza is an American behavioral psychologist who is a professor at the New York University. Her research considers the cultural and structural factors that impact mental and physical health amongst Latino communities. She serves as Vice Dean of the School of Public Health.

#1196

Caroline Horwath

#183259

Overall Influence

Caroline Christine Horwath is a New Zealand nutritional scientist and professor in the Department of Human Nutrition at the University of Otago. Academic career Horwath graduated from the University of Adelaide with a PhD in 1987. Her thesis was titled "A random population study of the dietary habits of elderly people". She subsequently joined the University of Otago as a lecturer in the Department of Human Nutrition. In December 2019 she, along with two of her colleagues Lisa Houghton and Rachel Brown, was promoted to full professor with effect from 1 February 2020.

#1197

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

#173053

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (43 years)

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is an Israeli clinical psychologist and author. Life Ayelet Gundar-Goshen was born in Israel. She has a master's degree in psychology from Tel Aviv University. During her studies, she worked as a journalist and news editor in the leading Israeli news paper, Yedioth Ahronoth. She also studied screenplay in Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. She is a clinical psychologist who also teaches at Tel Aviv University and the Holon Institute of Technology. She was a visiting author in San Francisco State University during 2018, and she is currently a visiting ar...

#1198

Mary W. Hicks

#186757

Overall Influence

1920 - Present (105 years)

Mary Ward Hicks was an American psychologist specializing in family therapy, and a professor emerita at Florida State University. Early life and education Mary Agnes Ward was born in Nyssa, Oregon and raised in Weiser, Idaho, the daughter of George P. Ward and Marian E. McDonald Ward . She graduated from Payette High School in 1938. She attended Whitman College and studied education as an undergraduate at the University of Idaho, graduating in 1942. She was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority at Idaho.

#1199

Irina Shmelyova

#183987

Overall Influence

Irina Alexandrovna Shmeleva is an environmental psychologist, formerly a professor of the School of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University. Dr Shmeleva has authored several books on the psychology of ecological consciousness, sustainable development, sustainable urban development, cross-cultural psychology and numerous papers on international environmental policy, international relations, and environmental discourse.

#1200

Helen Moewaka Barnes

Helen Moewaka Barnes

#56676

Overall Influence

Helen Moewaka Barnes is a New Zealand academic. She is Māori, of Te Kapotai and Ngapuhi-nui-tonu descent, and is currently a full professor at Massey University. In 2021 she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

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