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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Psychology,

#1301

Mary Cover Jones

Mary Cover Jones

1897 - 1987 (90 years)

Mary Cover Jones was an American developmental psychologist and a pioneer of behavior therapy, despite the field being heavily dominated by males throughout much of the 20th century. Joseph Wolpe dubbed her "the mother of behavior therapy" due to her famous study of Peter and development of desensitization.

#1302

Maria Ovsiankina

1898 - 1993 (95 years)

Maria Arsenjevna Rickers-Ovsiankina was a Russian-German-American psychologist. She studied what is now known as the Ovsiankina effect, a variation of the Zeigarnik effect. Ovsiankina worked in a variety of psychology jobs, including working with schizophrenia patients. She wrote books about psychological testing.

#1303

Kate Hevner Mueller

1898 - 1984 (86 years)

Kate Hevner Mueller was an American psychologist and educator who served as dean of women at Indiana University during 1938–1949. Biography Born Kate Lucile Hevner in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, she was the second daughter and middle child to a minister father and a schoolteacher mother. She attended Williamsport High School then matriculated in 1916 to Wilson College, where she majored in English with a minor in French. She graduated in 1920 with a Bachelor of Arts with honors. During her junior year she took a course in psychology, where she developed an interest in the subject.

#1304

Grace Fernald

1879 - 1950 (71 years)

Grace Maxwell Fernald was an educational psychologist and influential figure in early twentieth century literacy education. Fernald established "the first clinic for remedial instruction in 1921 at the University of California, Los Angeles". Tracing tactile learning tendencies back to Quintilian, Séguin, and Montessori, Fernald's kinesthetic spelling and reading method prompted struggling students to trace words. Years of research culminated in 1943 with her classic work, Remedial Techniques in Basic School Subjects. The popular kinesthetic method anchors modern instruction in the areas of special education and remedial reading.

#1305

Pat Dudgeon

Patricia Lynette Dudgeon , usually known as Pat Dudgeon, is an Aboriginal Australian psychologist, Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and a research professor at the University of Western Australia's School of Indigenous Studies. Her area of research includes Indigenous social and emotional wellbeing and suicide prevention. She is actively involved with the Aboriginal community, having an ongoing commitment to social justice for Indigenous people. Dudgeon has participated in numerous state and national committees, councils, task groups and community service activities in both a v...

#1306

Harriet Babcock

1877 - 1952 (75 years)

Harriet Babcock was an American psychologist who specialized in abnormal psychology research in addition to developing measures and theories of intelligence. After her doctoral work at Columbia University, she worked primarily in the Department of Psychology at New York University, and acted as a consultant to the New York City Guidance Bureau. Babcock developed multiple intelligence tests evaluating mental deterioration and efficiency.

#1307

Caroline Beaumont Zachry

1894 - 1945 (51 years)

Caroline Beaumont Zachry was an educational psychologist born in New York City to James Greer Zachry and Elise Clarkson Thompson. Her maternal grandfather was Hugh Smith Thompson the Governor of South Carolina from 1882 to 1886.

#1308

Kate Gordon Moore

1878 - 1963 (85 years)

Kate Gordon Moore was an American psychologist whose work focused on various aspects within cognitive psychology, and is noted for her work with color vision and perception, as well as aesthetics, memory, imagination, emotion, developmental tests for children, and attention span. Gordon's early work focused on color vision and how this interacted with memory. Her work shifted mid-career and then she started to research within the realm of education. Specifically, she published work that addressed women's education with regard to the notion that women must be educated differently from men. Her...

#1309

Lillian Moller Gilbreth

Lillian Moller Gilbreth

1878 - 1972 (94 years)

Lillian Evelyn Gilbreth was an American psychologist, industrial engineer, consultant, and educator who was an early pioneer in applying psychology to time-and-motion studies. She was described in the 1940s as "a genius in the art of living." Gilbreth, one of the first female engineers to earn a Ph.D., is considered to be the first industrial/organizational psychologist. She and her husband, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, were efficiency experts who contributed to the study of industrial engineering, especially in the areas of motion study and human factors. Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their ...

#1310

Anny Rosenberg Katan

1898 - 1992 (94 years)

Anny Rosenberg Katan was a child psychologist born in Vienna, Austria, who pioneered the use of psychoanalysis to treat emotionally disturbed youth. She had close personal ties to the Sigmund Freud family and was one of the first child analysts in the city of Vienna.

#1311

Katharine Banham

1897 - 1995 (98 years)

Katharine May Banham was an English psychologist who specialized in developmental psychology. She was the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. from the Université de Montréal. Early life and education Katharine May Banham received a B.S. from the University of Manchester in 1919 and a M.S. from Cambridge University in 1921. In 1923, she earned a M.A. from the University of Toronto and graduated cum laude from the Université de Montréal in 1934, being the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. from that university.

#1312

Ruth Wendell Washburn

1890 - 1975 (85 years)

Ruth Wendell Washburn was an American educational psychologist. She received a B.A. from Vassar in 1913, an M.A. from Radcliffe in 1922, and a Ph.D. degree from Yale University in 1929. The Ruth Washburn Cooperative Nursery School in Colorado Springs, Colorado is named in her honor.

#1313

Åse Gruda Skard

Åse Gruda Skard

1905 - 1985 (80 years)

Åse Gruda Skard was a Norwegian university professor, child psychologist and author. She was a noted pioneer in the field of childhood development and psychology. Biography She was born at Kristiania , Norway. She was the daughter of Halvdan Koht and Karen Elisabeth Grude . Her father was a noted historian and professor and the University of Oslo. Her mother was an educator, author and feminist pioneer. Her brother Paul Koht was a diplomat and ambassador.

#1314

Helga Eng

1875 - 1966 (91 years)

Helga Kristine Eng was a Norwegian psychologist and educationalist. She was the third woman to receive a doctor's degree in Norway, and the first to do so in psychology. Early life and education She was born in Rakkestad as a daughter of teacher and smallholder Hans Andersen Kirkeng and Johanne Marie Sæves . She had seven siblings. She graduated from Asker Seminary in 1895, and started a career as a primary school teacher. She started in Lier, continued in Moss from 1897 to 1900 when she was hired at Lakkegata School at Tøyen, Oslo.

#1315

Louisa E. Rhine

Louisa E. Rhine

1891 - 1983 (92 years)

Louisa Ella Rhine was an American doctor of botany and is known for her work in parapsychology. At the time of her death, she was recognized as the foremost researcher of spontaneous psychic experiences, and has been referred to as the "first lady of parapsychology."

#1316

Bernice Cronkhite

1893 - 1983 (90 years)

Bernice Brown Cronkhite was an educator and former dean of Radcliffe College, working there for thirty-six years. She was the first woman at Radcliffe College to earn a doctorate in political science.

#1317

Minnie Steckel

1890 - 1952 (62 years)

Minnie Steckel was an American teacher, psychologist, clubwoman, and an activist involved in the women's poll tax repeal movement. Steckel began her career as a school teacher and worked her way up to school principal, superintendent and school psychologist, earning her bachelor's, master's and PhD degrees. From 1932 until her death in 1952, she was the dean of women and counselor at Alabama College. She served as president of the local Montevallo chapter of the American Association of University Women from 1937 to 1939, as president of the state chapter of the Business and Professional Wome...

#1318

Clare Winnicott

1906 - 1984 (78 years)

Clare Winnicott OBE was an English social worker, civil servant, psychoanalyst and teacher. She played a pivotal role in the passing of The Children's Act of 1948. Alongside her husband, D. W. Winnicott, Clare would go on to become a prolific writer and prominent social worker and children's advocate in 20th century England.

#1319

Jessie P. Guzman

1898 - 1996 (98 years)

Jessie Parkhurst Guzman was a writer, archivist, historian, educator, and college administrator, primarily at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. In her work at the Tuskegee Institute, particularly in the Department of Research and Records, she documented the lives of African Americans and maintained the Institute's lynching records.

#1320

Agnes L. Rogers

Agnes L. Rogers

1884 - 1943 (59 years)

Agnes Low Rogers was a Scottish educator and educational psychologist. Early life Agnes Low Rogers was born in Dundee, the daughter of William Thomson Rogers and Janet Low Rogers. She earned a master's degree at the University of St. Andrews in 1908. She passed the Moral Sciences Tripos at Cambridge in 1911, and completed doctoral studies at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1917. Her dissertation, published the following year, was titled Experimental Tests of Mathematical Ability and their Prognostic Value .

#1321

Minnie Abercrombie

1909 - 1984 (75 years)

Minnie Abercrombie , also known as M. L. J. Abercrombie, was a British zoologist, educationalist and psychologist. She was known for her work on invertebrates and her work in the publishing industry, conducted with her husband, Michael Abercrombie. She also contributed to the theory and practice of education through her teaching, research, lecturing and writing. In particular, she carried out pioneer psychological research into the use of groups in learning with medical, architectural and education students, and she shared with diverse audiences in many countries her extensive knowledge and ex...

#1322

Ethel Dench Puffer Howes

1872 - 1950 (78 years)

Ethel Dench Puffer Howes was an American psychologist, suffragist, and college professor. She taught at Wellesley College, Smith College, and Simmons College. She was Executive Secretary of the National College Equal Suffrage League, and founder of the Institute for the Coordination of Women's Interests at Smith College.

#1323

Clara Louise Thompson

Clara Louise Thompson

1884 - Present (142 years)

Clara Louise Thompson was an American educator, Latinist, activist, feminist, and suffragette. She is the only woman to be awarded the American Fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies in Rome .

#1324

Anna Freud

1895 - 1982 (87 years)

Anna Freud CBE was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian–Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contributed to the field of psychoanalysis. Alongside Hermine Hug-Hellmuth and Melanie Klein, she may be considered the founder of psychoanalytic child psychology.

#1325

Melanie Klein

1882 - 1960 (78 years)

Melanie Klein was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested that pre-verbal existential anxiety in infancy catalyzed the formation of the unconscious, which resulted in the unconscious splitting of the world into good and bad idealizations. In her theory, how the child resolves that split depends on the constitution of the child and the character of nurturing the child experiences. The quality of resolution can inform the presence, absence, and/or type of distress...

#1326

Bluma Zeigarnik

Bluma Zeigarnik

1900 - 1988 (88 years)

Bluma Zeigarnik was a Soviet psychologist of Lithuanian origin, a member of the Berlin School of experimental psychology and the so-called Vygotsky Circle. She contributed to the establishment of experimental psychopathology as a separate discipline in the Soviet Union in the post-World War II period.

#1327

Virginia Satir

1916 - 1988 (72 years)

Virginia Satir was an American author and psychotherapist, recognized for her approach to family therapy. Her pioneering work in the field of family reconstruction therapy honored her with the title "Mother of Family Therapy". Her most well-known books are Conjoint Family Therapy, 1964, Peoplemaking, 1972, and The New Peoplemaking, 1988.

#1328

Charlotte Bühler

1893 - 1974 (81 years)

Charlotte Bühler was a German-American developmental psychologist. Life Bühler was born Charlotte Berta Malachowski in Berlin, the elder of two children of Jewish government architect Hermann Malachowski, and his wife Rose .

#1329

Mary Whiton Calkins

Mary Whiton Calkins

1863 - 1930 (67 years)

Mary Whiton Calkins was an American philosopher and psychologist, whose work informed theory and research of memory, dreams and the self. In 1903, Calkins was the twelfth in a listing of fifty psychologists with the most merit, chosen by her peers. Calkins was refused a Ph.D. by Harvard University because of her gender.

#1330

Margaret Floy Washburn

Margaret Floy Washburn

1871 - 1939 (68 years)

Margaret Floy Washburn , was a leading American psychologist in the early 20th century, was best known for her experimental work in animal behavior and motor theory development. She was the first woman to be granted a PhD in psychology ; the second woman, after Mary Whiton Calkins, to serve as president of the American Psychological Association ; and the first woman elected to the Society of Experimental Psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Washburn as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, James J. Gibson, David Rumelhart, Louis Leon Thurstone, and Robert S.

#1331

Karen Horney

1885 - 1952 (67 years)

Karen Horney was a German psychoanalyst who practised in the United States during her later career. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views. This was particularly true of her theories of sexuality and of the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis. She is credited with founding feminist psychology in response to Freud's theory of penis envy. She disagreed with Freud about inherent differences in the psychology of men and women, and like Adler, she traced such differences to society and culture rather than biology.

#1332

Mimí Langer

1910 - 1987 (77 years)

Marie "Mimí" Lisbeth Langer was an Austrian-born Latin American psychoanalyst and human rights activist. She was a cofounder of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association. Biography The daughter of Rudolf Glas and Margarethe Glas, Langer was born in Vienna in 1910. She had a sister, Gusti Eva Glas. Langer attended a private girls' school started by educator Eugenie Schwarzwald. After finishing medical school , she attended Freud's Psychoanalytic Institute.

#1333

Selma Fraiberg

1918 - 1981 (63 years)

Selma Fraiberg was an American child psychoanalyst, author and social worker. At the time of her death, Selma Fraiberg was a professor of child psychoanalysis at the University of California, San Francisco and a clinician who devoted her career to helping troubled children. She was also professor emeritus of child psychoanalysis at the University of Michigan Medical School, where she had taught from 1963 to 1979, and had also been director of the Child Developmental Project in Washtenaw County, Mich., for children with emotional problems.

#1334

Ruth Winifred Howard

Ruth Winifred Howard

1900 - 1997 (97 years)

Ruth Winifred Howard was an American psychologist. She is best known for her psychological work concerning students with special needs at Children's Provident Hospital School. She is one of the first African American women to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology. Howard was an active participant in the American Psychological Association, the International Council of Women Psychologists, the American Association of University Women, the National Association of College Women , and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She also received instruction from Florence Goodenough.

#1335

Margaret McFarland

1905 - 1988 (83 years)

Margaret Beall McFarland was an American child psychologist and a consultant to the television show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. She was the co-founder and director of the Arsenal Family and Children's Center in Pittsburgh, and much of her work focused on the meaning of the interactions between mothers and children. Fred Rogers referred to McFarland as his major professional influence.

#1336

Christine Ladd-Franklin

Christine Ladd-Franklin

1847 - 1930 (83 years)

Christine Ladd-Franklin was an American psychologist, logician, and mathematician. Early life and education Christine Ladd, sometimes known by the nickname "Kitty", was born on December 1, 1847, in Windsor, Connecticut, to Eliphalet, a merchant, and Augusta Ladd. During her early childhood, she lived with her parents and younger brother Henry in New York City. In 1853 the family moved back to Windsor, Connecticut, where her sister Jane Augusta Ladd McCordia was born the following year. Family correspondence shows that Augusta and one of her sisters were both staunch supporters of women's rights.

#1337

Isoko Hatano

1905 - 1978 (73 years)

Isoko Hatano was a Japanese developmental psychologist and writer. Her 1951 book, Shōnenki, was a national bestseller that was adapted into a feature film. She was awarded the Order of the Precious Crown in 1976.

#1338

Susan Sutherland Isaacs

Susan Sutherland Isaacs

1885 - 1948 (63 years)

Susan Sutherland Isaacs, CBE was a Lancashire-born educational psychologist and psychoanalyst. She published studies on the intellectual and social development of children and promoted the nursery school movement. For Isaacs, the best way for children to learn was by developing their independence. She believed that the most effective way to achieve this was through play, and that the role of adults and early educators was to guide children's play.

#1339

Jean Macfarlane

1894 - 1989 (95 years)

Jean Walker Macfarlane was an American psychologist. She was born in Selma, California. In 1922 she earned a doctoral degree in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley; she was the second person ever to do so, the first being Olga Bridgman in 1915. In 1927 Macfarlane founded the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of Human Development, originally called the Institute of Child Welfare.

#1340

Beatrice Edgell

Beatrice Edgell

1871 - 1948 (77 years)

Beatrice Edgell was a British psychologist, researcher and university teacher. She taught at Bedford College in the University of London from 1897 to 1933. She was the first British woman to earn a PhD in psychology and the first British woman to be named a professor of psychology. She was also the first female president of the British Psychological Society, the Aristotelian Society, the Mind Association and the Psychological Division of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

#1341

Karin Stephen

1889 - 1953 (64 years)

Karin Stephen was a British psychoanalyst and psychologist. Early life and education Karin Stephen was born Catherine Elizabeth Costelloe. Her mother, Mary Costelloe had been a Philadelphia Quaker, and her father, Benjamin Francis Conn Costelloe a Northern Irish convert to Roman Catholicism. The relationship between her parents was difficult, and her mother left her husband when Karin and her sister Rachel were very young. Her father died in 1899 when she was ten years old, so the sisters were then looked after by their grandmother. While at boarding school she won a scholarship for Newnh...

#1342

Franziska Baumgarten

1883 - 1970 (87 years)

Franziska Baumgarten-Tramèr was an industrial psychologist, professor, and researcher. She is known for her work on the effects of war and trauma, aptitude testing, and gifted schoolchildren. Early life Baumgarten was born in Łódź, Poland in 1886 or 1883. She graduated from gymnasium in 1901 and then in 1905 went to study literature and philosophy at the University of Krakow. There her interest in understanding human emotion led her to the field of psychology. In 1908 she moved to the University of Zurich where she worked with Gustav Störring, before moving to the University of Bonn and then to Berlin.

#1343

Catharine Cox Miles

1890 - 1984 (94 years)

Catharine Morris Cox Miles was an American psychologist known for her work on intelligence and genius. Born in San Jose, CA, to Lydia Shipley Bean and Charles Elwood Cox. In 1927 married psychologist Walter Richard Miles. Her sister was classics scholar and Quaker administrator Anna Cox Brinton.

#1344

Susan Speer

1900 - Present (126 years)

Susan "Sue" Speer C.Psychol, FHEA is a senior lecturer at the School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester. From 2005 to 2006 Speer was an ESRC-SSRC collaborative visiting fellow in the department of sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles .

#1345

Kristine Mann

1873 - 1945 (72 years)

Kristine Mann was an American educator and physician, with a particular interest in working women's health. She was an early practitioner of psychoanalysis in North America. Early life and education Kristine Mann was born August 29, 1873, in Orange, New Jersey. In 1885 Kristine and her family began spending summers at Bailey Island , a location that was reminiscent of her mother's native Denmark. Summering at Bailey Island would prove to be a lifelong ritual for Kristine.

#1346

Inez Beverly Prosser

1895 - 1934 (39 years)

Inez Beverly Prosser was a psychologist, teacher and school administrator. She is often regarded as the first African-American female to receive a Ph.D in psychology. Her work was very influential in the hallmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. After growing up in Texas, Prosser was educated at Prairie View Normal College, the University of Colorado and the University of Cincinnati. She was killed in a car accident a short time after earning her doctorate.

#1347

Eleanor Gamble

1868 - 1933 (65 years)

Eleanor Acheson McCulloch Gamble was an influential American psychologist from the late 19th century through the early 20th century. Gamble published most of her work on audition and memory influenced by Georg Elias Müller, Edward B. Titchener, Mary Whiton Calkins, and Ernst Heinrich Weber. Despite her chronic eye conditions she was successful in editing volumes of textbooks, her own papers, and directing many master's degree students. She earned her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College in 1889. She went on to obtain her doctorate from Cornell University in 1898. She held several teac...

#1348

Lorine Pruette

1896 - 1976 (80 years)

Lorine Livingston Pruette was an American feminist, psychologist, and writer. Early life Lorine Pruette was born in Millersburg, Tennessee, to college-educated parents. Her mother and her maternal grandmother were among the first generation of college-educated women in the United States. Pruette's mother's dreams of a career in writing were never fulfilled; she placed enormous pressure on Pruette to fulfill the life she always wanted.

#1349

Dorothy Adkins

1912 - 1976 (64 years)

Dorothy Christina Adkins was an American psychologist. Adkins is best known for her work in psychometrics and education testing, particularly in achievement testing. She was the first female president of the Psychometric Society and served in several roles in the American Psychological Association.

#1350

Maud A. Merrill

1888 - 1978 (90 years)

Maud Amanda Merrill was an American psychologist. Both an alumna and faculty member of Stanford University, Merrill worked with Lewis Terman to develop the second and third editions of the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions