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

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Psychology,

#351

Jill H. Larkin

#55065

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Jill Huston Larkin is an American cognitive scientist, science educator and Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University known for her work on information representations. Biography Born in Chicago, Illinois, Larkin obtained her BA in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1965, her MA in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1972, and her PhD in Science and Mathematics education from the University of California, Berkeley in 1975.

#352

Sumiko Iwao

#45270

Overall Influence

1935 - 2018 (83 years)

was a Japanese psychologist, educator, editor and professor emeritus at Keio University in Tokyo. She served as the editor-in-chief of Japan Echo, an English-language magazine and predecessor of Nippon.com, from 1997 until 2007, as well as a member of the Echo's editorial board from 1985 until 2007.

#353

Angeline Stoll Lillard

Angeline Stoll Lillard

#32510

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Dr. Angeline Stoll Lillard is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, where she directs the Early Development Laboratory, one of four child development laboratories in the psychology department at the university. Lillard is an internationally recognized expert in Montessori education and the author of Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, which is in its third edition, has been translated into several languages, and was awarded the Cognitive Development Society Book Award in 2006.

#354

June Gruber

#40448

Overall Influence

June Gruber is an American psychologist. She is associate professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Director of the Positive Emotion and Psychopathology Laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is known for her research on positive affectivity and mental health. She is a licensed clinical psychologist.

#355

Sigal G. Barsade

#37899

Overall Influence

1965 - 2022 (57 years)

Sigal G. Barsade was an Israeli-American business theorist and researcher, and was the Joseph Frank Bernstein Professor of Management at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to research, she worked as a speaker and consultant to large corporations across a variety of industries, such as Coca-Cola, Deloitte, Google, IBM, KPMG and Merrill Lynch, healthcare organizations such as GlaxoSmithKline and Penn Medicine, and public and nonprofit corporations such as the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Barsade co-chaired a task f...

#356

Sharon Brehm

#68308

Overall Influence

1945 - 2018 (73 years)

Sharon Stephens Brehm was an American psychologist who served as president of the American Psychological Association . She was a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas. She held administrative roles at Binghamton University and Ohio University, before becoming chancellor of Indiana University Bloomington.

#357

Bonnie Strickland

#65610

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Bonnie Ruth Strickland is known for her contributions to the psychology community. From her decades long career at Emory University and University of Massachusetts Amherst to her time as the president of the American Psychological Association she has contributed a great deal to clinical psychology, social psychology, and feminism.

#358

Susan H. McDaniel

#50752

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Susan H. McDaniel is an American psychologist and the Dr. Laurie Sands Distinguished Professor of Families & Health at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. She was the 2016 president of the American Psychological Association .

#359

Jozien Bensing

#58659

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Josina Maria "Jozien" Bensing is a Dutch clinical psychologist. Bensing was director of the between 1985 and 2008. Since 1993 she has been a professor of clinical and healthcare psychology at Utrecht University. Bensing was a winner of the 2006 Spinoza Prize.

#360

Ellen Bialystok

#14971

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Ellen Bialystok, OC, FRSC is a Canadian psychologist and professor. She carries the rank of Distinguished Research Professor at York University, in Toronto, where she is director of the Lifespan Cognition and Development Lab, and is also an associate scientist at the Rotman Research Institute of the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.

#361

Lucy Yardley

#70172

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Lucy Yardley is a British psychologist and professor of health psychology based at both the University of Bristol and University of Southampton . She is a senior investigator at the National Institute for Health Research and has a continuing role at the University of Southampton as Director of the LifeGuide Research Programme, and the Behavioural Science theme of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre.

#362

Anne Campbell

#50974

Overall Influence

1951 - 2017 (66 years)

Anne C. Campbell was a British academic and author specializing in evolutionary psychology. Her research was largely concerned with sex differences in aggression between men and women. She was professor of psychology at Durham University.

#363

Hilda Borko

#81354

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Hilda Borko is an American educational psychologist who researches teacher cognition and changes in novice and experienced teachers' knowledge and beliefs.Her research explores teachers’ instructional practices, the process of learning to teach, the impact of teacher professional development programs on teachers and students, and the preparation of professional development leaders. Her work has identified factors that affect teachers' learning of reform-based practices. She is chair of the educational psychology program area in the school of education at the University of Colorado, and is a former president of the American Educational Research Association.

#364

Emily Balcetis

#44322

Overall Influence

Emily E. Balcetis is an American social psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University. Her research focuses on people's perception of world and how their motivations, goals, and emotions influence it, especially with regards to visual perception.

#365

Marlene Behrmann

#52615

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Marlene Behrmann is a Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh. She was previously a Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. She specializes in the cognitive neuroscience of visual perception, with a specific focus on object recognition.

#366

Nicki R. Crick

#75103

Overall Influence

1958 - 2012 (54 years)

Nicki Rae Crick was a psychologist and professor of child development and family studies known internationally for her research on relational aggression, defined as the use of relationships as agents of harm . At the time of her death, she held the position of Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Psychology at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota.

#367

Martha W. Alibali

#62147

Overall Influence

Martha W. Alibali is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Psychology and Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and an investigator at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

#368

Paula Tallal

#38507

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Paula Tallal is a Rutgers Board of Governors Professor of Neuroscience and co-director of the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. Tallal is a participant on scientific advisory boards and government committees for both learning disabilities and developmental language disorders.

#369

Susana Urbina

#62908

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Susana Urbina is a Peruvian-American psychologist. She received her Ph.D. in Psychometrics from Fordham University in 1972 and was licensed in Florida in 1976. She currently teaches at University of North Florida, where her principal areas of teaching and research are psychological testing and assessment.

#370

Mary Czerwinski

#30771

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Mary Czerwinski is an American cognitive scientist and computer-human interaction expert who works for Microsoft Research as manager of their research group on visualization and interaction. Czerwinski earned her doctorate in cognitive science from Indiana University. She worked in computer-human interaction for Bellcore, the Johnson Space Center, and Compaq, and also held an adjunct position at Rice University while at Compaq. She moved to Microsoft in 1996, as a usability tester in product development. Two years later, she joined Microsoft Research, as the first social scientist to work there.

#371

Bonnie Burstow

#38394

Overall Influence

1945 - 2020 (75 years)

Bonnie Burstow was a Canadian psychotherapist, author, and anti-psychiatry scholar. She was a professor in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Burstow argued that conditions that the medical profession described as mental illnesses are in fact rational reactions to social, economic and political conditions and that psychiatry is rooted in patriarchy with a tendency to view troubled women as “hysterical” and to overdiagnose their conditions and overmedicate them. Burstow said that in psychiatry's view: “Women are disordered if they acted like women; wo...

#372

Lenora Fulani

#13265

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Lenora Branch Fulani is an American psychologist, psychotherapist, and political activist. She is best known for her presidential campaigns and development of youth programs serving minority communities in the New York City area. In the 1988 United States presidential election heading the New Alliance Party ticket, she became the first woman and the first African American to achieve ballot access in all fifty states. She received more votes for president in a U.S. general election than any other woman until Jill Stein of the Green Party of the United States in 2012. Fulani's political concern...

#373

Nicole Shelton

#82991

Overall Influence

J. Nicole Shelton is an American psychologist and Stuart Professor of Psychology at Princeton University. Her research focuses on racial prejudice and interactions between whites and ethnic minorities.

#374

Jee Hyun Kim

#50810

Overall Influence

Jee Hyun Kim is an Australian behavioral neuroscientist whose work focuses on emotional learning and memory during childhood and adolescence. She is an associate professor, principal research fellow, and head of the Molecular Psychiatry Laboratory at the Deakin University School of Medicine, Australia

#375

Julie Dachez

#52130

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (39 years)

Julie Dachez is a French social psychologist, lecturer and autism rights activist. She's the author of Invisible Differences and Dans ta bulle! . In 2016, she became the first openly autistic person to defend a thesis on the subject in France.

#376

Janellen Huttenlocher

#61713

Overall Influence

1932 - 2016 (84 years)

Janellen Huttenlocher was a psychologist and professor known for her research in the field of the child's environment in the development of cognitive skills. She was the William S. Gray Professor Emeritus in Psychology at the University of Chicago at the time of her death.

#377

Betsy Levy Paluck

#16058

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Levy Paluck is a professor in the department of psychology and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where she also serves as deputy director of the Center for Behavioral Science & Policy. She is known for her work on prejudice, social norms and conflict reduction. She is best known for creating large-scale field experiments utilizing theoretical social psychology strategies and tools to formulate effective and practical methods for reducing conflict and discrimination. Due to her extensive work investigating the influences of the Rwandan ...

#378

Janet Shibley Hyde

#59215

Overall Influence

Janet Shibley Hyde is the Helen Thompson Woolley Professor of Psychology and Gender & Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is known for her research on human sexuality, sex differences, gender development, gender and science, and feminist theory, and is considered one of the leading academics in the field of gender studies.

#379

Deborah H. Gruenfeld

#54627

Overall Influence

Deborah H. Gruenfeld is an American social psychologist whose work examines the way people are transformed by the organizations and social structures in which they work. She is the author of numerous papers on the psychology of power and group behavior. She is the Joseph McDonald Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and is also a co-director of the Executive Program for Women Leaders at the same institution, and is a board member of Stanford’s Center for the Advancement of Women’s Leadership. She was the inaugural chairholder of the Moghadam Family Professorship in 2008.

#380

Herta Flor

#88452

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

#381

Elizabeth Midlarsky

#45360

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Midlarsky was an American professor of psychology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Education Elizabeth Midlarsky completed a Bachelor of Arts at Brooklyn College. She earned a Master of Arts and doctor of philosophy from Northwestern University.

#382

Lesley Fallowfield

#41229

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Professor Dame Lesley Jean Fallowfield DBE is a British cancer psychologist and a professor of psycho-oncology at the University of Sussex. The main outcomes of her research have been the establishment of assessment tools to measure quality of life in clinical trials of cancer patients and the design of educational programmes to improve oncologists' communication with their patients.

#383

Susan Clancy

#44075

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Susan A. Clancy is a cognitive psychologist and associate professor in Consumer behaviour at INCAE as well as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. She is best known for her controversial work on repressed and recovered memories in her books Abducted and The Trauma Myth.

#384

Kelly McGonigal

#58100

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University who is known for her work in the field of "science help" which focuses on translating insights from psychology and neuroscience into practical strategies that support health and well-being. Mainstream media articles about inner-conflict-related aspects of modern lifestyles regularly quote her. A longtime advocate of self-compassion and mindfulness as stress-coping strategies, McGonigal has altered her focus on the problematic aspects of stress; in a talk at the TEDGlobalGlobal 2013, she emphasized the importance of a...

#385

Constantine Sedikides

#89312

Overall Influence

#386

Paula M. Niedenthal

#80800

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Paula M. Niedenthal is a social psychologist currently working as a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She also completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison where she received a Bachelor's in Psychology. She then received her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan before becoming a faculty member of the departments of Psychology at Johns Hopkins University and Indiana University. Until recently, she served as the Director of Research in the National Centre for Scientific Research at the Université Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand France.

#387

Carolyn Kagan

#32362

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Carolyn Kagan is a British community psychologist and social activist. Life and work Carolyn Morag Kagan grew up in Meopham, Kent. After working as a residential social worker in Scotland she went to North East London Polytechnic graduating with a degree in Psychology in 1974. She then obtained a DPhil in Social Psychology from Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

#388

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

#24907

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Emily Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is a psychologist and primatologist most known for her work with two bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha, investigating their linguistic and cognitive abilities using lexigrams and computer-based keyboards. Originally based at Georgia State University's Language Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, she worked at the Iowa Primate Learning Sanctuary in Des Moines, Iowa from 2006 until her departure in November 2013. She currently sits on the Board of Directors of Bonobo Hope.

#389

Katherine Klein

#74560

Overall Influence

Katherine Klein is an American organizational psychologist. Her research covers issues related to employee stock ownership, innovation and technology implementation, leadership, diversity, teams, and social networks, as well as methodological considerations related to multilevel organizational theory and research.

#390

Jennifer Eberhardt

#14850

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Jennifer Lynn Eberhardt is an American social psychologist who is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. Eberhardt has been responsible for major contributions on investigating the consequences of the psychological association between race and crime through methods such as field studies and laboratory studies. She has also contributed to research on unconscious bias, including demonstrating how racial imagery and judgment affect culture and society within the domain of social justice. The results from her work have contributed to training law enforcement officers and state agencies to better their judgments through implicit bias training.

#391

Laura-Ann Petitto

Laura-Ann Petitto

#30437

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Laura-Ann Petitto is a cognitive neuroscientist and a developmental cognitive neuroscientist known for her research and scientific discoveries involving the language capacity of chimpanzees, the biological bases of language in humans, especially early language acquisition , early reading, and bilingualism, bilingual reading, and the bilingual brain. Significant scientific discoveries include the existence of linguistic babbling on the hands of deaf babies and the equivalent neural processing of signed and spoken languages in the human brain. She is recognized for her contributions to the creation of the new scientific discipline, called educational neuroscience.

#392

Michelene Chi

#69965

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Michelene T. H. Chi is a cognitive and learning scientist known for her work on the development of expertise, benefits of self-explanations, and active learning in the classroom. Chi is the Regents Professor, Dorothy Bray Endowed Professor of Science and Teaching at Arizona State University, where she directs the Learning and Cognition Lab.

#393

Daphne Maurer

#56978

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Daphne Maurer is a Canadian developmental psychologist and professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University. She is known for her work on the development of visual perception in humans, starting in infancy.

#394

Pamela Stephenson

Pamela Stephenson

#44850

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Pamela Stephenson, Lady Connolly is a New Zealand-born psychologist, writer, actress and comedian. She moved with her family to Australia in 1953 and studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art . After playing several stage and television roles, she emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1976.

#395

Dianne Berry

#38237

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Dianne Claire Berry, is British psychologist and academic. She is Professor of Psychology and Dean of Postgraduate Research Studies at the University of Reading, having previously served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Dean of Social Sciences. She joined the University in 1990 as a lecturer, receiving a chair in 1997.

#396

Martha McClintock

#22035

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Martha Kent McClintock is an American psychologist best known for her research on human pheromones and her theory of menstrual synchrony. Her research focuses on the relationship that the environment and biology have upon sexual behaviour. She is the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago and is the Founder and past Director of the Institute for Mind and Biology.

#397

Nancy M. Petry

#75314

Overall Influence

1968 - 2018 (50 years)

Nancy M. Petry was a psychologist known for her research on behavioral treatments for addictive disorders, behavioral pharmacology, impulsivity and compulsive gambling. She was Professor of Medicine at the University of Connecticut Health Center. Petry served as a member of the American Psychiatric Association Workgroup on Substance Use Disorders for the DSM-5 and chaired the Subcommittee on Non-Substance Behavioral Addictions. The latter category includes Internet addiction disorder and problem gambling. She also served as a member of the Board of Advisors of Children and Screens: Institute...

#398

Marisa Carrasco

#68466

Overall Influence

Marisa Carrasco is a Mexican psychologist, who is a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University. She uses human psychophysics, neuroimaging, and computational modeling to investigate the relation between the psychological and neural mechanisms involved in visual perception and attention.

#399

Linnea Ehri

#85767

Overall Influence

Linnea Carlson Ehri is an American educational psychologist and expert on the development of reading. She is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Educational Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Ehri is known for her theory of orthographic mapping, which describes the process of forming "letter-sound connections to bond the spellings, pronunciations, and meanings of specific words in memory" that underlies fluent reading. As a consequence of orthographic mapping, written words are tightly linked with their pronunciations and meanings in memory and can be recog...

#400

Jolanda Jetten

#70653

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Petronella Antonia Gerarda "Jolanda" Jetten is a Dutch social psychologist and a professor at the University of Queensland. She won the Spearman Medal in 2004 and was inducted into the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2015. Her research concerns social identity, social groups, and group dynamics.

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