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,
#301
Jean Twenge
#23509
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Jean Marie Twenge is an American psychologist researching generational differences, including work values, life goals, and speed of development. She is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, author, consultant, and public speaker. She has examined generational differences in work attitudes, life goals, developmental speed, sexual behavior, and religious commitment.
Go to Profile#302
Catherine Lord
#75352
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Catherine Lord is an American psychologist and researcher. She is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts in autism. She currently serves as a member of the International Advisory Board for the The Lancet Psychiatry, as co-chair of the Scientific Research Council of the Child Mind Institute, and as the George Tarjan Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Education at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.
Go to Profile#303
Susan Iversen
#65238
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Susan Diana Iversen is a British experimental psychologist. She is a former Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford Early life and education She attended Girton College, Cambridge. At Cambridge she did a BA in Zoology followed by a PhD in Experimental Psychology.
Go to Profile#304
Roberta Klatzky
#40557
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Roberta "Bobby Lou" Klatzky is a Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University . She specializes in human perception and cognition, particularly relating to visual and non-visual perception and representation of space and geometric shapes. Klatzky received a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1968 and a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University in 1972. She has done extensive research on human haptic and visual object recognition, navigation under visual and nonvisual guidance, and perceptually guided action.
Go to Profile#305
Emmy Werner
#9745
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Emmy E. Werner was an American developmental psychologist known for her research on risk and resilience in children. Early life She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska and was a professor emerita in the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of California, Davis.
Go to Profile#306
Jane Close Conoley
#47410
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Jane Close Conoley is an American academic administrator who serves as the president of California State University, Long Beach. Education Conoley was awarded a New York State Regents full scholarship and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology, with minors in biology and philosophy, from the College of New Rochelle. She subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in school psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.
Go to Profile#307
Lenore E. Walker
#21746
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
Lenore Edna Walker is an American psychologist who founded the Domestic Violence Institute, documented the cycle of abuse and wrote The Battered Woman, published in 1979, for which she won the Distinguished Media Award that year. She was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1987.
Go to Profile#308
Juliette Favez-Boutonnier
#51851
Overall Influence
1903 - 1994 (91 years)
Juliet Favez-Boutonnier was a French academic, psychologist and psychoanalyst. Career After writing successive theses on ambivalence and angst, Favez-Boutonnier became a member of the SFP in the tradition of Pierre Janet, working to have psychoanalysis accepted in academia as a form of psychology.
Go to Profile#309
Elizabeth Stokoe
#40394
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Elizabeth Stokoe is a British social scientist and conversation analyst. Since January 2023, she has been Professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at The London School of Economics and Political Science. She was previously Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University in the Discourse and Rhetoric Group, where she remains an Honorary Professor. She has been Professor II at University of South-Eastern Norway since 2016.
Go to Profile#310
Jill de Villiers
#64822
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Jill G. de Villiers is a developmental psychologist known for her work in the field of language acquisition. She holds the position of Professor of Philosophy and Sophia and Austin Smith Professor of Psychology at Smith College. de Villiers is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. In 2018, she was elected as a Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#311
Sara Smilansky
#72353
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Sara Smilansky was a professor at Tel Aviv University in Israel and was a senior researcher for The Henrietta Szold Institute: The National Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences for the Ruth Bressler Center for Research in Education. She has been a visiting professor for many well known universities such as the University of Maryland, College Park. She focused her research on play training and its effects on children. Her research included studying both Israeli and American, as well as advantaged and disadvantaged, children. She wrote multiple books on children's play and its relation to learning, the effect of divorce and death on children, and the development of twins.
Go to Profile#312
Eveline Crone
#53199
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Eveline Crone is a Dutch professor of cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology at Leiden University. Her research focuses on risky behaviors in adolescent humans during puberty and examines the function of those risks. For her research in adolescent brain development and behaviour, she was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest recognition for Dutch scientists, in 2017.
Go to Profile#313
Kathy Pezdek
#63805
Overall Influence
Kathy Pezdek is Professor and Associate Dean of the School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences , Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Dr. Pezdek is a cognitive psychologist specializing in the study of eyewitness memory. She frequently serves as an expert witness in the area of eyewitness identification and has testified on this topic in Federal, State and Superior Court cases. Her extensive research has focused on a range of topics related to Law and Psychology that apply to both adults and children. These topics include face memory, false memory, suggestibility of memory, lineup techniques, and detecting deception.
Go to Profile#314
Tatyana Chernigovskaya
#23202
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Tatyana Vladimirovna Chernigovskaya is a Soviet and Russian scientist in the field of neuroscience, psycholinguistics and theory of mind, a Honored Worker of Science . On her initiative in 2000 was first open training specialization "Psycholinguistics" , Member of the Council on Science and Education under President of the Russian Federation.
Go to Profile#315
Kathleen Vohs
#69952
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (50 years)
Kathleen D. Vohs is an American Psychologist. She is Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Land O'Lakes Chair in Marketing in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In 2015, she was named an ISI Highly Cited Researcher, and in 2018, she received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Consumer Psychology.
Go to Profile#316
Helen Neville
#51134
Overall Influence
1946 - 2018 (72 years)
Helen J. Neville was a Canadian psychologist and neuroscientist known internationally for her research in the field of human brain development. Personal life and education Neville received a B.A. from the University of British Columbia, an M.A. from Simon Fraser University, and a Ph.D. from Cornell University, and she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego. She has been employed as Director of the Laboratory for Neuropsychology at the Salk Institute and as a professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at UCSD before joining th...
Go to Profile#317
Lila R. Gleitman
#29781
Overall Influence
1929 - 2021 (92 years)
Lila Ruth Gleitman was an American professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. She was an internationally renowned expert on language acquisition and developmental psycholinguistics, focusing on children's learning of their first language.
Go to Profile#318
Helena C Kraemer
#79834
Overall Influence
#319
Leann Birch
#61013
Overall Influence
1946 - 2019 (73 years)
Leann L. Birch was an American developmental psychologist, best known for her research on children's eating behaviors. Early life and education Birch was born in Owosso, Michigan, and grew up primarily in Southern California. She obtained a bachelor's degree in psychology from California State University, Long Beach in 1971. She completed her graduate studies in psychology at the University of Michigan, earning a master's degree in 1973 and a PhD in 1975.
Go to Profile#320
Ann Belford Ulanov
#40196
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Ann Belford Ulanov is an American academic and psychotherapist. She is the Christiane Brooks Johnson Memorial Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a Jungian analyst in private practice.
Go to Profile#321
Margaret Hermann
#50080
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
Margaret G. "Peg" Hermann is an American political psychologist who was the long-time director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
Go to Profile#322
Gwyneth Boodoo
#61765
Overall Influence
Gwyneth M. Boodoo is an American psychologist and expert on educational measurement. Boodoo received her doctorate in educational measurement from the University of Toronto in 1978. She has taught at Texas A&M University, where she was an associate professor in the department of educational psychology.
Go to Profile#323
Patricia Marks Greenfield
#62454
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Patricia Marks Greenfield is an American psychologist and professor known for her research in the fields of culture and human development. She is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California in Los Angeles and served as president of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology from 2014–2016.
Go to Profile#324
Ruth K. Chao
#68841
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Ruth K. Chao is an American psychologist. Her research interests center around the parenting styles and socialization of East Asian immigrant families, especially Chinese families, in the United States and Canada. She is an associate professor in the Psychology Department and the principal investigator for the Multicultural Families and Adolescents Study research project at the University of California, Riverside. She is a board member of the Global Parenting Education Group, a nonprofit organization that focuses on parent education in China and other countries.
Go to Profile#325
Anat Rafaeli
#14527
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Anat Rafaeli is an Israeli researcher, scholar of Organisational Behavior, a Professor Emerita at the Technion and the Yigal Alon Chair of Industrial Engineering and Mmanagement. She served as the Deputy Senior Vice President of International Academic Relations of the Technion and was the Executive Director of Technion International . Rafaeli is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, a member of the Academy of Management, with extensive experience as an author and a former member of the editorial boards of The Academy of Management Journal and The Academy of Management Review
Go to Profile#326
Theresa Marteau
#51868
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Dame Theresa Mary Marteau, is a British health psychologist, professor, and director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge, Fellow and director of studies for Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at Christ's College, Cambridge.
Go to Profile#327
Alice F. Healy
#21302
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Alice Fenvessy Healy is a psychologist and College Professor of Distinction Emeritus at the University of Colorado Boulder where she founded and directed the Center for Research on Training. She is known for her research in the field of cognitive psychology, spanning diverse topics including short-term memory, long-term memory, psycholinguistics, reading, decision-making, and cognitive training.
Go to Profile#328
Marian Breland Bailey
#47349
Overall Influence
1920 - 2001 (81 years)
Marian "Mouse" Breland Bailey was an American psychologist, an applied behavior analyst who played a major role in developing empirically validated and humane animal training methods and in promoting their widespread implementation. She and her first husband, Keller Breland , studied at the University of Minnesota under behaviorist B. F. Skinner and became "the first applied animal psychologists." Together they wrote the book Animal Behavior which was first published in 1966, after Keller's death.
Go to Profile#329
Leslie Rescorla
#64591
Overall Influence
1945 - 2020 (75 years)
Leslie Altman Rescorla was a developmental psychologist and expert on language delay in toddlers. Rescorla was Professor of Psychology on the Class of 1897 Professorship of Science and Director of the Child Study Institute at Bryn Mawr College. She was a licensed and school certified psychologist known for her longitudinal research on late talkers. In the 1980s, she created the Language Development Survey, a widely used tool for screening toddlers for possible language delays. Rescorla worked with Thomas M. Achenbach in developing the manual for the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Asse...
Go to Profile#330
Sara Kiesler
#52353
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Sara Beth Kiesler is the Hillman Professor Emerita of Computer Science and Human Computer Interaction in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. She is also a program director in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences at the US National Science Foundation, where her responsibilities include programs on Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace, The Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier, Smart and Connected Communities, and Securing American Infrastructure. She received an M.A. degree in psychology from Stanford in 1963, and a Ph.D., also ...
Go to Profile#331
Ursula Acosta
#48291
Overall Influence
1933 - 2018 (85 years)
Ursula Acosta was one of the founding members of the Puerto Rican Genealogical Society, who studied and written many works on the subject. She was also a psychologist and retired professor of the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez.
Go to Profile#332
Nadine Lambert
#58809
Overall Influence
1926 - 2006 (80 years)
Nadine Murphy Lambert was an American psychology and education professor. She founded the school psychology program at the University of California, Berkeley, created new instruments for school psychology use, and studied the course of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder . Lambert was a member of the board of directors of the American Psychological Association from 1984 to 1987.
Go to Profile#333
Diana Raab
#44216
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Diana Raab is an American author, poet, lecturer, educator and inspirational speaker. Early life Raab was born in Brooklyn, New York of two immigrant parents. She received her B.S. from Cortland State University in Health Administration with a minor in Journalism. She received her R.N. degree from Vanier College in Quebec, Canada and took her licensure in French. In 2003, she earned her MFA in Writing from Spalding University's low residency program in Kentucky. Raab was a medical journalist for 25 years. She has a Ph.D. in Psychology with a concentration in Transpersonal Psychology from Sofia University in Palo Alto.
Go to Profile#334
Janet F. Werker
#74936
Overall Influence
Janet F. Werker is a researcher in the field of developmental psychology. She researches the foundations of monolingual and bilingual infant language acquisition in infants at the University of British Columbia's Infant Studies Centre. Her research has pioneered what are now accepted baselines in the field, showing that language learning begins in early infancy and is shaped by experience across the first year of life.
Go to Profile#335
Francesca Gino
#28213
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Francesca Gino is an Italian-American behavioral scientist. In June 2023, after an investigation concluded that she had falsified data in her research, she was placed on unpaid administrative leave from her position as Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and as head of HBS's Negotiation, Organizations and Markets unit.
Go to Profile#336
Martha E. Bernal
#48537
Overall Influence
1931 - 2001 (70 years)
Martha E. Bernal was an American clinical psychologist. She earned her doctoral degree at Indiana University Bloomington in 1962. She was the first Latina to receive a doctorate degree in psychology in the United States. She helped with the treatment and assessment of children with behavioral problems and worked to develop organizations that have a focus on ethnic groups.
Go to Profile#337
Nancy Adler
#47707
Overall Influence
Nancy Elinor Adler is an American health psychologist. She is the Lisa and John Pritzker Professor of Medical Psychology at the University of California, San Francisco and director of UCSF's Center for Health and Community Sciences. Adler is known for her research on health behaviors, health disparities, and social determinants of health.
Go to Profile#338
Yuko Munakata
#55256
Overall Influence
Yuko Munakata is a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She has specialized in developmental cognitive neuroscience, taking a connectionist approach to cognitive development. Her research investigates the processing mechanisms underlying cognitive development, using converging evidence from behavior, computational modeling, and cognitive neuroscience. She also focuses on understanding the prevalence of task-dependent behaviors during the first years of life. Munakata received a B.S. in symbolic systems at Stanford University in 1991 and a PhD in psychology at Carnegie...
Go to Profile#339
Brenda Major
#75467
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Brenda Nelle Major is an American social psychologist and distinguished professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she heads the Self and Social Identity Lab.
Go to Profile#340
Anne Ancelin Schützenberger
#36302
Overall Influence
1919 - 2018 (99 years)
Anne Ancelin Schützenberger was a French psychologist and psychotherapist. During the Second World War she was a member of the French Resistance. She was born in Moscow, into a Jewish family, but grew up in Paris, where she received her education, leading eventually to doctorates in literature and psychology. As a result of her Resistance activities, she became regional secretary of the newly-formed Mouvement de libération nationale in 1944, and on 6 June of the same year her home was burned down by the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich. Having gained experience working on the MLN's journal, ...
Go to Profile#341
Deborah Britzman
#16314
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Deborah P. Britzman is a professor and a practicing psychoanalyst at York University. Britzman's research connects psychoanalysis with contemporary pedagogy, teacher education, social inequality, problems of intolerance and historical crisis.
Go to Profile#342
Deborah Terry
#51945
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Professor Deborah Jane "Debbie" Terry is an Australian university executive, and psychology scholar. She is currently the Vice-Chancellor and President of The University of Queensland. Professor Terry is also currently the Chair of Universities Australia, the peak body representing Australia's higher education sector.
Go to Profile#343
Lynn Fuchs
#50369
Overall Influence
Lynn Fuchs is an educational psychologist known for research on instructional practice and assessment, reading disabilities, and mathematics disabilities. She is the Dunn Family Chair in Psychoeducational Assessment in the Department of Special Education at Vanderbilt University.
Go to Profile#344
Amanda Woodward
#61824
Overall Influence
Amanda Woodward is Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences and the William S. Gray Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago. Her research investigates infant social cognition and early language development including the understanding of goal-directed actions, agency, theory of mind, and learning from social partners. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Go to Profile#345
Jean Mercer
#29550
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Jean Mercer is an American developmental psychologist and professor emerita of psychology at Stockton University. Founder of the advocacy group Advocates for Children in Therapy, she is known as an advocate for adopted children and those who come from the foster care system, and as an outspoken critic of attachment therapy.
Go to Profile#346
Mary Carskadon
#25156
Overall Influence
Mary A. Carskadon is one of the most prominent American researchers in sleep. She is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She is also the Director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Research Lab at E.P. Bradley Hospital. She is considered to be an expert on sleep and circadian rhythms during childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. She researches issues related to daytime sleepiness. She has also contributed important research on school start times as it relates to sleep patterns and sleepiness in adolescence. Every summer, Dr.
Go to Profile#347
Melanie Killen
#50580
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Melanie Killen is a developmental psychologist and Professor of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, and Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. She is supported by funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development , and the National Science Foundation for her research. In 2008, she was awarded Distinguished Scholar-Teacher by the Provost's office at the University of Maryland. She is the Director of the Social and Moral Development Lab at the University of Maryla...
Go to Profile#348
Evelin Lindner
#56470
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Evelin Gerda Lindner is a German-Norwegian medical doctor, psychologist, transdisciplinary scholar and author who is known for her theory of humiliation. Lindner is originally a physician and a clinical psychologist, and holds doctorates in both psychological medicine and social psychology. Her research focuses on human dignity, and she believes that the humiliation of honor and dignity may be among the strongest obstacles on the way to a decent world community. She founded the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies network. Born in Germany, she is now mainly based in Norway, where she has partially lived since 1977.
Go to Profile#349
Philippa Garety
#75706
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Philippa Garety is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Clinical Director of the Psychosis Clinical Academic Group , South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Garety specializes in the psychological understanding and treatment of psychosis and, in particular, delusions.
Go to Profile#350
Christina Salmivalli
#69522
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Christina Salmivalli is a Finnish professor of psychology and the deputy head of the INVEST research flagship at the University of Turku in Finland. Salmivalli is recognized as an expert on peer relations and school bullying.
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