Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Psychology,

#451

Maryse Lassonde

Maryse Lassonde

#90778

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Maryse Lassonde is a Canadian academic and neuropsychologist. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Developmental Neuropsychology at the Université de Montréal and the University Hospital Center Sainte-Justine researching brain disorders.

#452

Susan Gathercole

#83082

Overall Influence

Susan Elizabeth Gathercole was the Unit Director at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. from 2011 until 2018. She is a research psychologist, best known for her studies into working memory deficits in children. She has worked extensively with Professor Alan Baddeley, the co-creator, along with Professor Graham Hitch, of arguably the most well-researched working memory model. In 2014 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

#453

Soo Jung Lee

#69028

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Soo Jung Lee is a South Korean forensic psychologist, professor of forensic psychology at Kyonggi University in Seoul, and part of the country's first generation of criminal profilers. She has been named part of BBC's list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2019, in the leadership category. Lee has worked numerous high-profile murder cases, and believes stalking is what leads to more serious crimes. As a result of this she helped introduce an anti-stalking bill now passed in South Korea.

#454

Brinton Lykes

#48283

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

M. Brinton Lykes is an American psychologist who has established a reputation for her work on psychosocial effects of state-sponsored terror and organized violence. Life Lykes originally hailed from New Orleans. She obtained her first BA degree from Hollins University before proceeding to Harvard University where she obtained an M.Div. in Applied Theology. She obtained a Ph.D. in Community Psychology from Boston College.

#455

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

#53322

Overall Influence

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek is the Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Professor of Psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she directs the Temple University Infant Language Laboratory. She is the author of 14 books and over 200 publications on early childhood and infant development, with a specialty in language and literacy, and playful learning.

#456

Lorenza Colzato

#78964

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Lorenza S. Colzato is an Italian cognitive psychologist who is best known for the attention she received in the mainstream media in the Netherlands for multiple incidents of scientific misconduct. Her research "aims to understand the neural and neuromodular underpinnings of cognitive control in humans."

#457

Mary Hegarty

#72067

Overall Influence

Mary Hegarty is an Irish–American psychologist who is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research considers spatial thinking in complex processes. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#458

Patricia Bauer

#82615

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Patricia J. Bauer is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory University. She is known for her research in the field of cognitive development, with a specific focus on how children develop their earliest memories and how their memory is influenced by parents, peers, and the environment around them. Her research has explored the phenomenon of childhood amnesia and how social, cognitive, and neural changes relate to the development of autobiographical memory.

#459

Nora Newcombe

#47916

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Nora S. Newcombe is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology and the James H. Glackin Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Temple University. She is a Canadian-American researcher in cognitive development, cognitive psychology and cognitive science, and expert on the development of spatial thinking and reasoning and episodic memory. She was the principal investigator of the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center , one of six Science of Learning Centers funded by the National Science Foundation.

#460

Nora Sveaass

#63936

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Nora Sveaass is a Norwegian psychologist, and an expert on refugees, human rights violations, and psychological consequences of torture and violence as well as treatment and rehabilitation of victims of torture and violence. She is Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychology of the University of Oslo. She served two terms as one of the nine members of the United Nations Committee against Torture from 2005 to 2013, after being nominated as the joint candidate of the governments of the Nordic countries. She did not stand for reelection in 2013; however, in 2015 she was elected as a ...

#461

Ingrid Johnsrude

#35942

Overall Influence

Ingrid Suzanne Johnsrude is a Canadian neuroscientist, a professor of psychology at University of Western Ontario, and was the holder of the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience. Her research involves brain imaging, the connections between brain structure and language ability, and the diagnosis of degenerative brain diseases in the elderly.

#462

Rebecca Treiman

#55817

Overall Influence

Rebecca Treiman is an American psychologist. She is the Burke and Elizabeth High Baker Professor of Child Developmental Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and head of the Reading and Language Lab there. Treiman's research focuses on spelling and reading, and especially on the linguistic factors that affect these processes.

#463

Estela V. Welldon

Estela V. Welldon

#67066

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Estela V. Welldon, MD DSc F.R.C.Psych Hon. Memb. A.Psa.A. BPC, is an honorary consultant psychiatrist in forensic psychotherapy at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. Biography Born in Mendoza, Argentina, she studied medicine at Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. She founded of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy in 1991.

#464

Cynthia García Coll

#58908

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Cynthia García Coll is an American developmental psychologist, and the former editor-in-chief of Child Development. She is currently an adjunct professor in the Pediatrics Department at the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus. She has authored more than a hundred publications, including several books. In 2020, she received the Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society.

#465

Phebe Cramer

#101108

Overall Influence

1935 - 2021 (86 years)

Phebe Cramer was a clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology, Emerita at Williams College. She was known for her research on defense mechanisms, body image, and narcissism, and for her creation of a manual for coding defense mechanisms for purposes of psychological testing and personality assessment. Cramer was the 2014 recipient of the Bruno Klopfer Award from the Society for Personality Assessment for lifetime achievement in Personality Psychology.

#466

Rheta DeVries

#38800

Overall Influence

1936 - 2012 (76 years)

Rheta Goolsby DeVries was a professor at University of Northern Iowa's Regent's Center For Early Developmental Education, where she also served as director. She co-wrote many books along with Constance Kamii, concerning early childhood education curriculum that both influenced the field of early childhood mathematical instruction and accelerated the proliferation of constructivist-based teaching in the classroom.

#467

Kristine Beate Walhovd

#91259

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Kristine Beate Walhovd is a Norwegian psychologist, neuroscientist and Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Oslo. Together with fellow neuroscientist Anders Fjell, she established the Centre of Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition at the University of Oslo, which was given the status of "world leading research environment" by the Government of Norway in 2015. She and Anders Fjell shared the Fridtjof Nansen Prize in 2007. She was elected as a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2011. In 2017 she received a European Research Council consolidator grant. Acco...

#468

Jennifer Aaker

#64547

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Jennifer Aaker is an American behavioural scientist and General Atlantic Professor and Coulter Family Fellow at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is known for her research on time, money, and happiness. Aaker also focuses on the transmission of ideas through social networks, the power of story in decision making, and how to build global brands across cultures. She is the recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award from the Society for Consumer Psychology and the Stanford Distinguished Teaching Award.

#469

Renee Rabinowitz

#28027

Overall Influence

1934 - 2020 (86 years)

Renee Ginsburg Rabinowitz Wagner was an American-Israeli psychologist and lawyer. She was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Antwerp, Belgium, but fled with her family to the United States in 1941, following the outbreak of World War II, and grew up in New York City. Her parents were Marcus "Max" Charles Ginsburg and Helena "Hella" Zimmet. She had one brother named Herbert "Herbie" Ginsburg. She earned a doctorate in educational psychology at the University of Chicago, and a law degree at Notre Dame University. She taught psychology at Indiana University, and later served as in-house legal counsel at Colorado College.

#470

Elizabeth Kuipers

#89919

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Alice Kuipers is a professor of psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, and was head of the Psychology Department from 2006- 2012. Kuipers is a consultant clinical psychologist and until 2012, had an honorary appointment at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, working as part of the psychosis community mental health team in Southwark. She is a founding director of the PICuP clinic and was the chair of the NICE Schizophrenia Guideline update 2007-9 and the Psychosis and Schizophrenia update 2011-2014

#471

Elda Grin

#96579

Overall Influence

1928 - 2016 (88 years)

Elda Ashoti Grigoryan , known also as Elda Grin was an Armenian writer, psychologist, professor, and legal expert. Biography Grin was born in 1928 in Tiflis . From 1943-47 she studied at Foreign Language Faculty of Yerevan Russian Pedagogical Institute. Grin was a Professor of psychology at Yerevan State University. She also published ten books of short stories, among them: “A Night Sketch” , “My Garden” , “We Want to Live Beautifully” , and “Space of Dreams” . In 2010 her short-story "The Hands" was published in Yerevan in a separate volume in 35 languages, including Icelandic, Luxembourgish, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Hebrew, etc.

#472

Suzanne Kessler

#33521

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Suzanne Kessler is an American social psychologist known for the application of ethnomethodology to gender. She and Wendy McKenna pioneered this application of ethnomethodology to the study of gender and sex with their groundbreaking work, Gender an Ethnomethodological Approach. Twenty years later, Kessler extended this work in a second book, Lessons from the Intersexed.

#473

Becca Levy

#39268

Overall Influence

Becca R. Levy is a professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She is a leading researcher in the fields of social gerontology and psychology of aging. She is credited with creating the field of how age stereotypes, which are assimilated from the culture, impact the health of older individuals. The Dean of Columbia School of Public Health describes Levy as "a pioneer" in the "growing body of impressive research showing that our attitudes toward aging affect our health, our resilience in the face of adversity, and our very survival....

#474

Ruth Kanfer

#89549

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Ruth Kanfer is a psychologist and professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in the area of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. She is best known for her research in the fields of motivation, goal setting, self-regulation, job search, adult learning, and future of work. Kanfer has received numerous awards for her research contributions including the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution in Applied Research in 1989, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology William R. Owens Scholarly Achievement Award in 2006 and the SIOP Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award in 2007.

#475

Barbara Engelking

Barbara Engelking

#24282

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

#476

Cathy Spatz Widom

Cathy Spatz Widom

#90904

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Cathy Spatz Widom is a psychologist and professor known for her research in the fields of early childhood abuse and neglect. She has received the AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research in 1989, the Edwin H. Sutherland Award in 2013, and the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2016. She was co-editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology from 2010 to 2013. Widom has conducted research to determine the long term consequences of early childhood physical and sexual abuse and child neglect.

#477

Amy Shelton

#95321

Overall Influence

Amy Lynne Shelton is a U.S. cognitive psychology professor and academic administrator serving as the director of the Center for Talented Youth since 2022. She is a professor and associate dean for research at the Johns Hopkins School of Education.

#478

Lynn S. Liben

#99662

Overall Influence

Lynn S. Liben is developmental psychologist known for her research on effects of gender and racial stereotypes on child development. Liben is an Evan Pugh University Professor of Psychology, Human Development and Family Studies, and Education at Pennsylvania State University.

#479

Wendy Hollway

#99605

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Wendy Ann Hollway is a British psychologist specialising in feminist psychology, social psychology and qualitative methods. Biography Hollway was born in New Manchester in 1949. She studied psychology at the University of Sheffield, graduating in 1971, and obtained a postgraduate certificate from Newcastle University in 1972. She then worked as a lecturer and awarded a PhD by the University of London in 1982. Over her career, Hollway has held positions at the University of Bristol, Birkbeck College, the University of Bradford, and the University of Leeds. She is currently an Emeritus Professo...

#480

Jalie Tucker

#86929

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Jalie A Tucker is a professor of Health Education and Behavior at the University of Florida. She is known for her research on impulsive and harmful behaviors, such as alcohol and substance use, the effect of the environment on addiction, and natural resolutions to risky behavior including alcohol misuse. She has received numerous awards for excellence in clinical psychology and addiction research, including the 2015 Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Clinical Psychology from the Society of Clinical Psychology . She was honored by APA, Division 50 with the Presidential Award...

#481

Katie A. McLaughlin

#95692

Overall Influence

Katie A. McLaughlin is an American clinical psychologist and expert on how stress, trauma, and other adverse events, such as natural disorders or pandemics, affect behavioral and brain development during childhood and adolescence. McLaughlin is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.

#482

Katie Witkiewitz

#91704

Overall Influence

Katie Witkiewitz is an American psychologist, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Director of the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, & Addictions, and the Addictive Behaviors and Quantitative Research Lab.

#483

Linda Bartoshuk

#72098

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Linda May Bartoshuk is an American psychologist. She is a Presidential Endowed Professor of Community Dentistry and Behavioral Science at the University of Florida. She is an internationally known researcher specializing in the chemical senses of taste and smell, having discovered that some people are supertasters.

#484

Lise Abrams

#51599

Overall Influence

Lise Abrams is an American cognitive psychologist. She is the Peter W. Stanley Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Pomona College and also serves as the chair of Linguistics and Cognitive Science.

#485

Shirley Collado

#34551

Overall Influence

Shirley M. Collado is an American psychology professor and academic administrator. She was the 9th president of Ithaca College. Collado was the second woman to hold the post and the first person of color. She is the first Dominican American to be named president of a four-year college in the United States. Prior to joining Ithaca, Collado was assistant professor of psychology, dean of the college and vice-president for student affairs at Middlebury College, then vice president for institutional planning and community engagement at Lafayette College. After returning to Middlebury College to ser...

#486

Betsy Becker

#83263

Overall Influence

Betsy Jane Becker is an American researcher on meta-analysis and educational psychometrics. She is the Mode L. Stone Distinguished Professor of Educational Statistics in the Department of Statistics at Florida State University, and previously served as the Chair of the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems at Florida State. Becker is a co-author of a heavily cited consensus report on standards for meta-analysis in epidemiology.

#487

Wendy Johnson

#73620

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Wendy Johnson is an American differential psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Edinburgh. She holds the chair in Differential Development in the Department of Psychology and Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh.

#488

Janet Polivy

#104332

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

#489

Simine Vazire

#90050

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Simine Vazire is Professor of Psychology Ethics and Wellbeing at the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; formerly Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. She is a social and personality psychologist who studies how self-perception and self-knowledge influence one's personality and behavior. She obtained a PhD in the social and personality psychology program at the University of Texas at Austin.

#490

Gloria Careaga Pérez

#34169

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Gloria Angélica Careaga Pérez is a Mexican social psychologist and feminist. She has taught at the Faculty of Psychology in the National Autonomous University of Mexico since 1979. She is co-founder of Mexican organization El Closet de Sor Juana and former co-Secretary General of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.

#491

Núria Sebastián Gallés

#97511

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Núria Sebastián Gallés is a cognitive scientist known for her work on bilingual language development and the impact of bilingualism on cognition. She is Professor of Psychology at Pompeu Fabra University where she heads the Speech Acquisition and Perception Research Group. In 2012, Sebastián Gallés received the Narcis Monturiol Medal as recognition of her scientific contributions. She was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2016.

#492

Susan Schneider

Susan Schneider

#44848

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Susan Lynn Schneider is an American philosopher and artificial intelligence expert. She is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University where she also holds the William F. Dietrich Distinguished Professorship. Schneider has also held the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation at NASA and the Distinguished Scholar Chair at the Library of Congress.

#493

Tania Lombrozo

#88905

Overall Influence

Tania Lombrozo is an American psychologist who is the Arthur W. Marks Professor of Psychology at Princeton University. She oversees the Concepts and Cognition Laboratory, which looks to understand the science that underpins cognition.

#494

Regina Becker-Schmidt

#79169

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Regina Becker-Schmidt is an emeritus professor at the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology at the Leibniz University Hannover. Her research focuses on corporate and subject theory, critical theory, psychoanalytically oriented social psychology and gender studies. She is considered a seminal figure in feminist critical theory.

#495

Elizabeth Gould

#60150

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Elizabeth Gould is an American neuroscientist and the Dorman T. Warren Professor of Psychology at Princeton University. She was an early investigator of adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus, a research area that continues to be controversial. In November 2002, Discover magazine listed her as one of the 50 most important women scientists.

#496

Karalyn Patterson

Karalyn Patterson

#72925

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Karalyn Eve Patterson, is a British psychologist in Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge and MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. She is a specialist in cognitive neuropsychologyand an Emeritus Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.

#497

Julie D. Henry

#105854

Overall Influence

#498

Sally Casswell

#98328

Overall Influence

Sally Casswell is a New Zealand academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the Massey University. She is a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Dependence and Alcohol Problems and is chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Global Alcohol Policy Alliance. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and an Officer of the Order of New Zealand.

#499

Yael Niv

#80020

Overall Influence

Yael Niv is a neuroscientist who studies human and animal reinforcement learning and decision making. She is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University. Niv is known for her research contributions and for her visible advocacy work fighting against gender bias in neuroscience. Niv is founder of biaswatchneuro.com, a website that tracks statistics in an effort to combat sexism in science.

#500

Lois Bloom

#85258

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Lois Masket Bloom is an American developmental psychologist and Edward Lee Thorndike Professor Emerita of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her pioneering research elucidated the roles of cognition, emotion, and social behavior in language acquisition.

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