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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential female people in Computer Science,
#651
Adji Bousso Dieng
#64677
Overall Influence
Adji Bousso Dieng is a Senegalese Computer Scientist and Statistician working in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Her research bridges probabilistic graphical models and deep learning to discover meaningful structure from unlabelled data. She is currently an Artificial Intelligence Research Scientist at Google Brain in Mountain View, California. In 2021, she will start her tenure-track faculty position at Princeton University becoming the first Black female faculty member in the School of Engineering and Applied Science as well as the first Black faculty member ever in the Department of Computer Science.
Go to Profile#652
Sheelagh Carpendale
#108743
Overall Influence
Sheelagh Carpendale is a Canadian artist and computer scientist working in the field of information visualization and human-computer interaction. Profession Carpendale is a professor at the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University, where she holds an NSERC/SMART Industrial Research Chair in Interactive Technologies. She was previously a professor at University of Calgary, where she held a Canada Research Chair in Information Visualization and an NSERC/AITF/SMART Industrial Research Chair in Interactive Technologies. She directs the Innovations in Visualization research group. A...
Go to Profile#653
Michal Feldman
#72987
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Michal Feldman is a full professor of Computer Science and the Chair of Computation and Economics at Tel Aviv University, the head of Economics and Computation lab, and a visiting researcher in Microsoft Research Israel. Michal’s research focuses on algorithmic game theory, an area that lies in the intersection of computer science, microeconomics and game theory. Among other topics, she studies auction theory, mechanism design, algorithm design, the price of anarchy, and e-commerce. Michal is an alumna of the Israel Young Academy and of the Global Young Academy. Her research is funded by pre...
Go to Profile#654
Ewa Deelman
#99708
Overall Influence
Ewa Deelman is an American computer scientist specializing in distributed computing and cloud computing for applications in scientific computing. Her contributions include leading the design of the Pegasus scientific workflow management system, used by the LIGO scientific collaboration to detect gravitational waves from binary black holes. She is a research professor of computer science in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and a principal scientist at the Information Sciences Institute, both part of the University of Southern California.
Go to Profile#655
Ellen W. Zegura
#102132
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Ellen Witte Zegura is an American computer scientist who works as a professor in the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, and was the founding chair of the school from 2007 to 2012. Her research concerns a combination of computer network research and computing for social good.
Go to Profile#656
Martha Evens
#99097
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (89 years)
Martha Evens is an emeritus professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She worked on the first spelling correction program at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the late 1950s. Evens was president of the Association for Computational Linguistics in 1984.
Go to Profile#657
Ludmila Kuncheva
#116815
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Ludmila Ilieva Kuncheva is a Bulgarian-British computer scientist known for her research on pattern recognition and machine learning, and particularly on systems that combine results from multiple classifiers. She is professor in computer science at Bangor University in Wales.
Go to Profile#658
Valerie M. Weaver
#112341
Overall Influence
Valerie M. Weaver is a professor and the director of the Center for Bioengineering and Tissue Regeneration in the department of surgery and co-director Bay Area Center for Physical Sciences and Oncology at the University of California San Francisco . She has been working and leading oncology research for more than 20 years. Her scientific contributions have been recognised by different awards. She was the first woman to receive the Shu Chien Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2022, which honours contributions in the cellular and molecular bioengineering field.
Go to Profile#659
Flora Peyvandi
#117837
Overall Influence
#660
Patricia Bouyer-Decitre
#113903
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Patricia Bouyer-Decitre is a French theoretical computer scientist known for her research on timed automata, model checking, and temporal logic. She is a senior researcher for the French National Centre for Scientific Research , and director of the Laboratoire Méthodes Formelles of CNRS and the École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay.
Go to Profile#661
Lenore Cowen
#49311
Overall Influence
Lenore Jennifer Cowen is an American mathematician and computer scientist known for her work in graph coloring, network routing, and computational biology. She is a professor of computer science and of mathematics at Tufts University.
Go to Profile#662
Barbara Boucher Owens
#86602
Overall Influence
Barbara Boucher Owens is an American computer scientist noted for her leadership in computer science education. She was the Chair of SIGCSE from 2007 to 2010 and an elected member of the SIGCSE Board for 16 years from 1997 to 2013.
Go to Profile#663
Cristina Sernadas
#57173
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Maria Cristina De Sales Viana Serôdio Sernadas is a Portuguese mathematical logician whose research topics have included object-oriented specification languages and logics for information systems, and the use of category theory in the combination of multiple types of logic. She is Professor for Logic and Computation in the Department of Mathematics of the Technical University of Lisbon.
Go to Profile#664
Gudrun J. Klinker
#111129
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Gudrun Johanna Klinker is a German computer scientist known for her work on augmented reality. Professional career Klinker finished her graduate studies in informatics 1982 at Hamburg University. From 1983 to 1988 she worked as a teaching and research assistant at the computer science department of Carnegie Mellon University, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1988. From 1989 to 1998 she worked as a member of research staff up to scientific leader in research projects e.g. at Cambridge Research Lab of DEC, European Computer-Industry Research Center in Munich and Fraunhofer project group for augmented reality in Munich/Darmstadt.
Go to Profile#665
Roxana Geambasu
#67060
Overall Influence
Roxana Geambașu is a Romanian-American computer scientist who is an associate professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. The topics of her research include cloud computing, security and privacy, and operating systems.
Go to Profile#666
Angela Sasse
#57076
Overall Influence
Martina Angela Sasse is a German psychologist whose research spans the areas of human–computer interaction and computer security. She is Horst Görtz Endowed Professor of Human-Centred Security at Ruhr University Bochum. and has a part-time position as Professor of Human-Centred Technology at University College London.
Go to Profile#667
Nicole Megow
#89779
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Nicole Megow is a German discrete mathematician and theoretical computer scientist whose research topics include combinatorial optimization, approximation algorithms, and online algorithms for scheduling. She is a professor in the faculty of mathematics and computer science at the University of Bremen.
Go to Profile#668
Yusu Wang
#63755
Overall Influence
Yusu Wang is a Chinese computer scientist and mathematician who works as a professor at the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute at the University of California, San Diego . Her research concerns computational geometry and computational topology, including results on discrete Laplace operators, curve simplification, and Fréchet distance.
Go to Profile#669
Jean Scholtz
#86092
Overall Influence
Jean Clarice Scholtz is an American computer scientist known for her contributions to human–computer interaction, and particularly for developing the "Common Industry Format" for usability test results while at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Go to Profile#670
Dipti Srinivasan
#78158
Overall Influence
Dipti Srinivasan is a Singaporean electrical engineer whose research involves renewable energy and smart grids. She is a professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and director of the Centre for Green Energy Management & Smart Grid at the National University of Singapore.
Go to Profile#671
Judith Klavans
#83332
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Judith L. Klavans is a linguist and computer scientist. She has been active in academia, industry and government in furthering the development and application of computational approaches to the study of language, with publications in areas including speech synthesis, machine translation, the development of resources and corpus analysis, internet addiction, information retrieval, and automatic summarization. Her technologies have been applied in fields ranging from medical informatics, cybersecurity, database interoperability, cultural heritage institutions and Digital Government.
Go to Profile#672
Helen C. Frederick
#50804
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Helen C. Frederick is an American artist, curator, and the founder of Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, an arts organization in Maryland. She is known mainly for printed media and large-scale works created by hand papermaking as a medium of expression that often incorporate the use of language. She has curated exhibitions such as Ten Years After 9/11, which respond to issues about the human condition.
Go to Profile#673
Mary-Anne Williams
#91120
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Mary-Anne Williams FTSE is the Michael J Crouch Chair for Innovation at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia based in the UNSW Business School. She is founder and director of the UNSW Business AI Lab and deputy director of the UNSW AI Institute.
Go to Profile#674
C. Dianne Martin
#72446
Overall Influence
Carol Dianne Briggs Martin is an American computer scientist, former Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at George Washington University and first Senior Faculty Fellow of the North Carolina Study Center. She currently teaches at the University of North Carolina Department of Computer Science and the School of Information and Library Sciences.
Go to Profile#675
Maristella Agosti
#95764
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Maristella Agosti , is an Italian researcher and professor. Her research covers retrieval, user engagement, databases, digital cultural heritage, and data engineering. She has published more than 200 papers covering these areas. She also is the Professor in Computer Science at the University of Padua. She was granted the title of Professor Emeritus by Decree of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research. She is also a recipient of the Tony Kent Strix Award.
Go to Profile#676
Suzanna Lewis
#44196
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Suzanna E. Lewis was a scientist and Principal investigator at the Berkeley Bioinformatics Open-source Project based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory until her retirement in 2019. Lewis led the development of open standards and software for genome annotation and ontologies.
Go to Profile#677
Sanja Fidler
#103573
Overall Influence
Sanja Fidler is an associate professor at the University of Toronto and Director of AI at Nvidia. She is also a co-founder of the Vector Institute, University of Toronto and Canada CIFAR AI Chair. Her research is in the areas of computer vision and artificial intelligence.
Go to Profile#678
Elaine Shi
#100103
Overall Influence
Elaine Runting Shi is a Chinese and American computer scientist and cryptographer, whose research has included work on blockchain and smart contracts, secure distributed systems, and the oblivious RAM model, and cryptographic techniques for encrypted computation. She is an associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
Go to Profile#679
Janice E. Cuny
#78269
Overall Influence
Janice E. Cuny, known as Jan, is an American computer scientist noted for leading efforts in broadening participation in computing. She is a past co-chair of CRA-W: Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research from 1997-2000.
Go to Profile#680
Athena Vakali
#118335
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Athena I. Vakali is a Greek computer scientist whose topics of research include social networks, cloud computing, smart cities, and content delivery networks. She is a professor of informatics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Go to Profile#681
Mary Amanda Dew
#120813
Overall Influence
#682
Laura Waller
#90359
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (45 years)
Laura Ann Waller is a computer scientist and Ted Van Duzer Endowed Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She was awarded a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Fellowship to develop microscopes to image deep structures within the brain in 2017 and won the 2018 SPIE Early Career Award.
Go to Profile#683
Maya Ackerman
#79044
Overall Influence
Margareta Ackerman is a Russian-American computer scientist known for her research in cluster analysis and algorithmic composition of music. She is an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Santa Clara University, and the founder and CEO of algorithmic music firm WaveAI.
Go to Profile#684
Anna Molka Ahmed
#34780
Overall Influence
1917 - 1994 (77 years)
Anna Molka Ahmed was a Pakistani artist and a pioneer of fine arts in the country after its independence in 1947. She was a professor of fine arts at the University of the Punjab in Lahore. Early life and career Anna Molka Ahmed was born Molly Bridger to Jewish parents, in London, England on 13 August 1917. Her mother was Polish and father was Russian. She converted to Islam at the age of 18 in 1935, before marrying Sheikh Ahmed in October 1939, who was then studying in London. She studied painting, sculpture and design at St. Martin School of Arts in London, and received a scholarship to th...
Go to Profile#685
Varda Shalev
#91989
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Varda Shalev is an Israeli medical researcher,a professor of medicine at the Tel Aviv University School of Public Health, and a primary care physician. She is also the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Alike. In 11.2022 she became a managing partner at Team8 foundry.
Go to Profile#686
Robyn Owens
#54770
Overall Influence
Robyn Anne Owens is an Australian applied mathematician and computer scientist known for her research in computer vision and face recognition, and on the non-invasive imaging of lactation. Formerly a professor at the University of Western Australia and the deputy vice-chancellor for research at UWA, she retired in 2019, and remains affiliated with UWA as a professorial fellow.
Go to Profile#687
Laura Grigori
#60153
Overall Influence
Laura Grigori is a French-Romanian applied mathematician and computer scientist known for her research on numerical linear algebra and communication-avoiding algorithms. She is a director of research for the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation in Paris, and heads the "Alpines" scientific computing project jointly affiliated with INRIA and the of Sorbonne University.
Go to Profile#688
Katy Börner
#67597
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Katy Börner is an engineer, scholar, author, educator, and speaker specializing in data analysis and visualization, particularly in the areas of science and technology studies and biomedical applications. Based out of Indiana University, Bloomington, Börner is the Victor Yngve Distinguished Professor of Engineering & Information Science in the Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering and the Department of Information and Library Science at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering and a member of the Core Cognitive Science Faculty. Since 2012, she has also held the pos...
Go to Profile#689
Christine Jérôme
#121596
Overall Influence
#690
Joan Jonas
#7860
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
Joan Jonas is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, and one of the most important artists to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Jonas' projects and experiments were influential in the creation of video performance art as a medium. Her influences also extended to conceptual art, theatre, performance art and other visual media. She lives and works in New York and Nova Scotia, Canada.
Go to Profile#691
Margaret Philomena Rayman
#121678
Overall Influence
#692
Anne-Marie Kermarrec
#115604
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Anne-Marie Kermarrec is a French computer scientist. She is Professor at EPFL , where she heads the Scalable Computing Systems Laboratory at the School of Computer and Communication Sciences. Her research concerns distributed computing, epidemic algorithms, peer-to-peer networks, and systematic support for machine learning.
Go to Profile#693
Laure Gossec
#122017
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
#694
Patricia Rodriguez
#44350
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Patricia Rodriguez is a prominent Chicana artist and educator. Rodriguez grew up in Marfa, Texas and moved to San Francisco to later pursue an art degree at Merritt College and this is where she learned about the Mexican American Liberation Art Front and the Chicano Movement. In 1970, Patricia received a scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute and this is where she met Graciela Carrillo. Together, they created and founded the Mujeres Muralistas, the first Chicana women's mural collective in San Francisco.
Go to Profile#695
Caroline Anne Ross
#72948
Overall Influence
Caroline Anne Ross is a British physicist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was named as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2004 for innovative research into the magnetic properties of thin film and nanoscale structures, and for the development of novel lithographic and self-assembly methods for nanostructure fabrication and named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2013 for contributions to synthesis and characterization of nanoscale structures and films for magnetic and magneto-optical devices. She is the Associate Head o...
Go to Profile#696
Susie Wee
#87388
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Susie J. Wee is an American technology expert. In 2011, she became the Vice President and Chief Technology and Experience Officer of Collaboration at Cisco Systems. In 2018, she became the Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Cisco DevNet, which she founded in 2014. Wee is a WITI Hall of Fame inductee.
Go to Profile#697
Nancy Spero
#15432
Overall Influence
1926 - 2009 (83 years)
Nancy Spero was an American visual artist. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Spero lived for much of her life in New York City. She married and collaborated with artist Leon Golub. As both artist and activist, Nancy Spero had a career that spanned fifty years. She is known for her continuous engagement with contemporary political, social, and cultural concerns. Spero chronicled wars and apocalyptic violence as well as articulating visions of ecstatic rebirth and the celebratory cycles of life. Her complex network of collective and individual voices was a catalyst for the creation of her figurative lex...
Go to Profile#698
Mariam Al Maadeed
#32787
Overall Influence
Mariam Al Maadeed is a Qatari national and a Professor in Physics and Materials Science at Qatar University. Biography Mariam Al Maadeed is the current Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies at Qatar University. Al Maadeed was the Director of the Center for Advanced Materials , and founder of the Masters program of Materials Science and Technology, both at Qatar University. Al Madeed's research is in the field of polymer characterization and structure, nanocomposites and nanotechnology techniques.
Go to Profile#699
Celia Pearce
#51598
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Celia Pearce is an American game designer currently teaching at Northeastern University as a full professor. She is a co-founder and current Festival Chair of IndieCade, an international festival of independent games. She is currently a professor at Northeastern University and occasionally talks and shows games at art and game events such as Different Games and Incubate Arcade.
Go to Profile#700
Ayesha Kausar
#122887
Overall Influence
