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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.

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List of the most influential female people in Psychology,

#1301

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.

#1302

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.

#1303

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.

#1304

Gertrude Rand

1886 - 1970 (84 years)

Marie Gertrude Rand Ferree was an American research scientist who is known for her extensive body of work about color perception. Her work included "mapping the retina for its perceptional abilities", "developing new instruments and lamps for ophthalmologists", and "detection and measurement of color blindness". Rand, with LeGrand H. Hardy and M. Catherine Rittler, developed the HRR pseudoisochromatic color test.

#1305

Dana R. Carney

Dana R. Carney is an American psychologist. She is associate professor of business at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a Barbara and Gerson Bakar Faculty Fellow, an affiliate of the Department of Psychology and the director of the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California, Berkeley.

#1306

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."

#1307

Suzi Gage

Suzanne H. Gage is a British psychologist and epidemiologist who is interested in the nature of associations between lifestyle behaviours and mental health. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool and has a popular science podcast and accompanying book, Say Why to Drugs, which explores substance use.

#1308

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.

#1309

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...

#1310

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.

#1311

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.

#1312

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 .

#1313

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...

#1314

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.

#1315

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 .

#1316

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.

#1317

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.

#1318

Edna Frances Heidbreder

1890 - 1985 (95 years)

Edna Frances Heidbreder was an American philosopher and psychologist who explored the study of history, and made contributions toward the field of study in psychometrics, systematic psychology, and concept formation. She expressed interest in cognition and systematic psychology, and the experimentation on personality traits and its characteristics. She also did work testing the normal inferiority complex and studied systemic problems in her later work.

#1319

Eugénie Ginsberg

1870 - 1944 (74 years)

Eugénie Ginsberg or Eugénie Ginsberg-Blaustein was a Polish philosopher and psychologist noted for her works on descriptive psychology and her analysis of existential dependence, independence, and related concepts as applied in the area of psychology.

#1320

Margaret K. Knight

1903 - 1983 (80 years)

Margaret Kennedy Knight , , was a psychologist and humanist. Biography Born in Hertfordshire, England, Knight went to Girton College, Cambridge University, graduating in 1926. In 1948 she gained a master's degree.

#1321

Kate Brousseau

1862 - 1938 (76 years)

Kate Brousseau was an American professor and researcher on mental hygiene, chair of the Psychology Department at Mills College. Early life Kate Brousseau was born on April 24, 1862, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, daughter of Judge Julius Brousseau , born in New York by French Canadian parents, and Caroline Yakeley , of English and German heritage. Brousseau was the older of four siblings.

#1322

Grace Manson

1893 - 1967 (74 years)

Grace Eveyln Manson was an American psychologist known for her work as an occupational psychologist. Early life and education Manson was born on July 15, 1893, in Baltimore, Maryland. Educated at Goucher College, where she received her AB in 1915, and Columbia University, where she received her AM in 1919, she went on to earn a Ph.D. from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1923.

#1323

Margaret Verrall

1857 - 1916 (59 years)

Margaret de Gaudrion Verrall was a classical scholar and lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge. Much of her life and research was concerned with the study of parapsychology, mainly in order to examine how psychic abilities might demonstrate the abilities, breadth and power of the human mind. She began to exhibit and develop psychic abilities herself around 1901, and became both a recipient and analyst of many cross-correspondences produced by psychics, most notably the Palm Sunday scripts.

#1324

Naomi Norsworthy

Naomi Norsworthy

1877 - 1916 (39 years)

Naomi Norsworthy was an American psychologist who served as the first female faculty member at Columbia University Teacher's College. Her parents had emigrated from England two years before her birth. Norsworthy was the eldest of four children with two younger brothers and a third who died soon after birth. She was educated in public school in Rutherford, New Jersey then enrolled in New Jersey State Normal School at the age of 15, and was among the youngest students there; she graduated from the school in three years.

#1325

Grete L. Bibring

Grete L. Bibring

1899 - 1977 (78 years)

Grete Lehner Bibring was an Austrian-American psychoanalyst who became the first female full professor at Harvard Medical School in 1961. Life Life in Vienna Grete Bibring was born as Margarethe Lehner on January 11, 1899, in Vienna, Austria. She was the youngest child of factory owner Moriz Lehner and his wife Victoria Josefine Lehner, née Stengel. Her siblings were two older brothers, Ernst and Fritz, and a sister, Rosi. Her upbringing was amongst a wealthy Jewish family that often hosted dinner parties and imparted to her an appreciation for music, science, and art. She attended Akademisches Gymnasium until 1918, when she graduated.

#1326

Frieda Goldman-Eisler

1907 - 1982 (75 years)

Frieda Goldman-Eisler was a psychologist and pioneer in the field of psycholinguistics. She is known for her research on speech disfluencies; a volume dedicated in her honor calls her "the modern pioneer of the science of pausology".

#1327

Louise Arseneault

Louise Arseneault is a Canadian psychologist and Professor of Developmental Psychology in the Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London, where she has taught since 2001.

#1328

Nancy Bayley

1899 - 1994 (95 years)

Nancy Bayley was an American psychologist best known for her work on the Berkeley Growth Study and the subsequent Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Originally interested in teaching, she eventually gained interest in psychology, for which she went on to obtain her Ph.D. in from the University of Iowa in 1926. Within two years, Bayley had accepted a position at the Institute for Child Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. There she began the longitudinal Berkeley Growth Study, which worked to create a guide of physical and behavioral growth across development. Bayley also exam...

#1329

Hilde Bruch

1904 - 1984 (80 years)

Hilde Bruch was a German-born American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known foremost for her work on eating disorders and obesity. Bruch emigrated to the United States in 1934. She worked and studied at various medical facilities in New York City and Baltimore before becoming a professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1964.

#1330

Myrtle Byram McGraw

1899 - 1988 (89 years)

Myrtle Byram McGraw was an American psychologist, neurobiologist, and child development researcher. Education Myrtle was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the fifth of seven children of the farmer Riley McGraw and his seamstress wife Mary Byram. She grew up in an area that was still recovering from the aftermath of the American Civil War. After completing a sixth grade level of education, she took a course in a local business school to learn shorthand and typing. Afterward, she was hired by a law office, where she worked for the next two years at a salary of $3 per hour. While there, the lawyer for whom she worked had the foresight to encourage her to continue her education.

#1331

Leta Stetter Hollingworth

1886 - 1939 (53 years)

Leta Stetter Hollingworth was an American psychologist, educator, and feminist. Hollingworth also made contributions in psychology of women, clinical psychology, and educational psychology. She is best known for her work with gifted children.

#1332

Carolyn Sherif

1922 - 1982 (60 years)

Carolyn Wood Sherif was an American social psychologist who helped to develop social judgment theory and contributed pioneering research in the areas of the self-system, group conflict, cooperation, and gender identity. She also assumed a leading role in psychology both nationally as well as internationally. In addition to performing seminal social psychology research, Wood Sherif devoted herself to teaching her students and was recognized for her efforts with an American Psychological Association award named in her honor that is presented annually.

#1333

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.

#1334

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.

#1335

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.

#1336

Margaret Kuenne Harlow

1918 - 1971 (53 years)

Margaret Ruth Kuenne Harlow was an American developmental psychologist. She was married to Harry Harlow from 1946 until her death in 1971. Early life Margaret Ruth Kuenne was born in St. Louis on 29 August 1918 to Edward S. Kuenne and Margaret E. Kuenne; she was the oldest of three children .

#1337

Mary Collins

1895 - 1989 (94 years)

Mary Collins was an expert in colour vision, and psychology lecturer at Edinburgh University. Academic career Mary Collins gained her MA in 1917 from Edinburgh University, her BEd in 1919 and PhD in 1923. She was then appointed lecturer in psychology at the University. Her first book, Colour blindness was published in 1925 covering her initial work in studying aspects of color vision. Subsequently, she worked extensively with Sir James Drever, head of department, and subsequently with Boris Semeonoff . Collins became senior lecturer by 1950 and reader by 1956, retiring "before 1962".

#1338

Lillien Jane Martin

Lillien Jane Martin

1851 - 1943 (92 years)

Lillien Jane Martin was an American psychologist. She published over twelve books. Martin experienced ageism and sexism as an early woman in psychology. Early life and education Lillien Jane Martin was born on July 7, 1851, at Olean, New York. At the age of four, she entered the nearby Olean Academy. At the age of sixteen, her talents were recognized such that she became a teacher at a girls' school in Wisconsin. By the age of 26, in 1876, she had earned enough money to return to her native New York where she enrolled at Vassar College at Poughkeepsie, New York.

#1339

Mary Louise Northway

1909 - 1987 (78 years)

Mary Louise Northway was a Canadian psychologist, recognized for her work in the area of sociometry . She was a faculty member at the University of Toronto. Biography Northway was born in Toronto on May 28, 1909; she was the only child of Lucy Northway and Arthur Garfield Northway. She was educated in Toronto at Branksome Hall, Rosedale Public School, and Bishop Strachan School.

#1340

June Downey

1875 - 1932 (57 years)

June Etta Downey was an American psychologist who studied personality and handwriting. Downey was born and raised in Laramie, Wyoming, where she received her degree in Greek and Latin from the University of Wyoming. Throughout her life Downey wrote seven books and over seventy articles. Included in this work, Downey developed the Individual Will-Temperament Test, which was one of the first tests to evaluate character traits separately from intellectual capacity and the first to use psychographic methods for interpretation.

#1341

Theodora Mead Abel

1899 - 1998 (99 years)

Theodora Mead Abel was an American clinical psychologist and educator, who used innovative ideas by combining sociology and psychology. She was a pioneer in cross-cultural psychology. Early life and education Theodora was born in Newport, Rhode Island, on September 9, 1899, and raised in New York City.

#1342

Thelma Alper

1908 - 1988 (80 years)

Thelma Gorfinkle Alper was an American clinical psychologist, known for creating a study measure for women's achievement motivation. She was also the first Jewish woman to receive a Ph.D from Harvard, having careers at multiple institutions as she conducted studies primarily on memory of tasks, with an interest in its relation to women.

#1343

Emma Sophia Baker

1856 - 1943 (87 years)

Emma Sophia Baker was a Canadian psychologist. In 1903, she became the first person to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto, it is important to know that psychology was considered a subdiscipline of philosophy at the time. Baker was also one of the first two women to earn a Ph.D. from that institution, the other was chemist Clara Benson.

#1344

Mildred B. Mitchell

1903 - 1983 (80 years)

Mildred Bessie Mitchell was a psychologist who graduated from Yale University in 1931. She was the first clinical psychology examiner for the US Astronaut Program helping NASA select men for Project Mercury in 1959.

#1345

Therese Benedek

1892 - 1977 (85 years)

Therese Benedek was a Hungarian-American psychoanalyst, researcher, and educator. Active in Germany and the United States between the years 1921 and 1977, she was regarded for her work on psychosomatic medicine, women's psychosexual development, sexual dysfunction, and family relationships. She was a faculty and staff member of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis from 1936 to 1969.

#1346

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.

#1347

Hilde Himmelweit

Hilde Himmelweit

1918 - 1989 (71 years)

Hildegard Therese Himmelweit was a German social psychologist who had a major influence on the development of the discipline in Britain. Biography Hilde was born in Berlin in 1918. Her father, Dr Siegfried Litthauer, was a chemist and industrialist. She went to Newnham College, Cambridge . She married Freddy Himmelweit. She received her PhD under Hans Eysenck at the Institute of Psychiatry.

#1348

Isabelle Liberman

1918 - 1990 (72 years)

Isabelle Yoffe Liberman was an American psychologist, born in Latvia, who was an expert on reading disabilities, including dyslexia. Isabelle Liberman received her bachelor's degree from Vassar College and her doctorate from Yale University. She was a professor at the University of Connecticut from 1966 through 1987 and a research associate at the Haskins Laboratories.

#1349

Deborah L. Best

1900 - Present (126 years)

Deborah L. Best is the William L. Poteat Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Education Best earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and an MA in General Experimental Psychology at Wake Forest University, and a PhD in developmental psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

#1350

Louise L. Sloan

1898 - 1982 (84 years)

Louise Littig Sloan was an American ophthalmologist and vision scientist. She is credited for being a pioneer of the sub-division of clinical vision research, contributing more than 100 scientific articles in which she either authored or co-authored. Her most notable work was in the area of visual acuity testing where she developed and improved equipment. Sloan received her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College in experimental psychology. She spent a short period of time in both Bryn Mawr's experimental psychology program as well as the Department of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. The majori...

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