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,
#701
Marie-Francine Moens
#118655
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Marie-Francine Moens is a Belgian computer scientist known for her research in natural language processing, argument mining, sentiment analysis, and information retrieval. She is a professor of computer science at KU Leuven.
Go to Profile#702
Primavera De Filippi
#80746
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Primavera De Filippi is a French legal scholar, Internet activist and artist, whose work focuses on the blockchain, peer production communities and copyright law. She is permanent researcher at the CNRS and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. She is author of the book Blockchain and the Law published by Harvard University Press. As an activist, she is part of Creative Commons, the Open Knowledge Foundation and the P2P Foundation, among others.
Go to Profile#703
Eleni Stroulia
#115648
Overall Influence
Eleni Stroulia is a Greek and Canadian computer scientist whose research concerns artificial intelligence, social computing, smart buildings, the internet of things, and software engineering for real-world applications. She is a professor of computing science at the University of Alberta, where she has been a McCalla Professor and the holder of the NSERC/AITF Industrial Research Chair in Service Systems Management.
Go to Profile#704
Mira Schor
#57489
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Mira Schor is an American artist, writer, editor, and educator, known for her contributions to critical discourse on the status of painting in contemporary art and culture as well as to feminist art history and criticism.
Go to Profile#705
Ann F. Chambers
#123189
Overall Influence
#706
Shoshana Wodak
#65229
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (123 years)
Shoshana Wodak is a computational biologist and an organizational leader in the field of protein-protein docking. Wodak was one of the first people to dock proteins together using a computer program.
Go to Profile#707
Alexa Beiser
#91416
Overall Influence
Alexa S. Beiser is an American professor of biostatistics and public health researcher. Biography Beiser did her PhD in mathematics at Boston University, following her M.A. at the University of California, San Diego in Applied Mathematics and B.A. in Biology and Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Go to Profile#708
Diana Anderson
#117916
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Diana Anderson is a British biomedical scientist who is a professor at the University of Bradford. Her research has focussed on early cancer detection and genome stability. She was appointed an Order of the British Empire in 2022 for her services to cancer detection.
Go to Profile#709
Andrea Polle
#123440
Overall Influence
#710
Kristina Höök
#94075
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Kristina Höök is a Swedish computer scientist specializing in human–computer interaction and known for her work in somaesthetics. She is a professor in interaction design at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#711
Stella Atkins
#89080
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Stella Atkins is a Professor Emeritus in computing science at Simon Fraser University in Canada, and one of the founding members of the Systers community for technical women in computing. Her primary research interests are in medical computing and medical image display and analysis.
Go to Profile#712
Lei Shu
#123942
Overall Influence
#713
Elina Ikonen
#124164
Overall Influence
#714
Heather Kelley
#93956
Overall Influence
Heather Kelley is a media artist, writer and video game designer. She is a co-founder of the Kokoromi experimental game collective, with whom she produces and curates the annual Gamma game event promoting experimental games as creative expression in a social context. She regularly appears as a jury member for several computer gaming festivals . She is also a frequent public speaker at technology events.
Go to Profile#715
Catherine Klersy
#124233
Overall Influence
#716
Hadas Shachnai
#114100
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Hadas Shachnai is an Israeli computer scientist specializing in combinatorial optimization, including knapsack problems, interval scheduling, and the optimization of submodular set functions. She is a professor of computer science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and co-editor-in-chief of Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science.
Go to Profile#717
Teri Klein
#91797
Overall Influence
Teri E. Klein is an American professor of Biomedical Data Science and Medicine at Stanford University. She is known for her work on pharmacogenomics and computational biology. Education Klein has a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Francisco . In 2000 she started a position at Stanford University where, as of 2022, she holds the position of professor .
Go to Profile#718
Elizabeth Krupinski
#107402
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Elizabeth Anne Krupinski is a Professor and Vice Chair for Research of Radiology & Imaging Sciences at Emory University. She works on the perception of medical images and decision-making. Dr. Krupinski is a Fellow of SPIE, Fellow of the Society Imaging Informatics in Medicine , Fellow of the American Telemedicine Association and Fellow of the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering . She has previously served as Chair for the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference, Chair of SIIM, President of the American Telemedicine Association, President of the Medical Image Perception Society an...
Go to Profile#719
Lynn Hershman Leeson
#83191
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Lynn Hershman Leeson is a multimedia American artist and filmmaker. Her work combines art with social commentary, particularly on the relationship between people and technology. Leeson is a pioneer in new media, and her work with technology and in media-based practices helped legitimize digital art forms. Her interests include feminism, race, surveillance, and artificial intelligence and identity theft through algorithms and data tracking. She has been referred to as a "new media pioneer" for the prescient incorporation of new science and technologies in her work. She is based in San Francis...
Go to Profile#720
Lesley Visser
#60638
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Lesley Candace Visser is an American sportscaster, television and radio personality, and sportswriter. Visser is the first female NFL analyst on TV, and the only sportscaster in history who has worked on Final Four, NBA Finals, World Series, Triple Crown, Monday Night Football, the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the World Figure Skating Championships and the U.S. Open network broadcasts. Visser, who was voted the No. 1 Female Sportscaster of all time in a poll taken by the American Sportscasters Association, was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association's Hall of Fame...
Go to Profile#721
Jill Slay
#105624
Overall Influence
Jill Slay is a British-Australian engineer and computer scientist. Her work has attracted international attention and she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for "service to the information technology industry through contributions in the areas of forensic computer science, security, critical infrastructure protection, and cyberterrorism."
Go to Profile#722
Yvonne Rainer
#8087
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Yvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is regarded as challenging and experimental. Her work is sometimes classified as minimalist art. Rainer currently lives and works in New York.
Go to Profile#723
Michal Irani
#116326
Overall Influence
Michal Irani is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Education Irani received her Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Subsequently, she was a member of the Vision Technologies Laboratory at the Sarnoff Research Center .
Go to Profile#724
Daniela Berg
#125797
Overall Influence
#725
Yolanda Picó
#125798
Overall Influence
#726
Tuhina Neogi
#125808
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#727
Elsebeth Lynge
#126033
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
#728
Barbara B. Knowles
#126110
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#729
Susan Louise Shatter
#63415
Overall Influence
1943 - 2011 (68 years)
Susan Louise Shatter was an American landscape painter. Shatter painted landscapes in both oil and watercolor, preferring the earth tones of volcanic canyons or rocky coastlines rather than the green pastoral settings more traditionally associated with the genre. Winged Shadow, Waimea Canyon, Kauai, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art demonstrates her modernist approach to barren landscapes. The Art Institute of Chicago, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center , the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Hood Museum of Art , the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Academy Museum and Schoo...
Go to Profile#730
Rineke Verbrugge
#58974
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Laurina Christina Verbrugge is a Dutch logician and computer scientist known for her work on interpretability logic and provability logic. She completed her PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 1993 under the supervision of Dick de Jongh, Anne Troelstra, and Albert Visser.
Go to Profile#731
Xiaobo Sharon Hu
#113921
Overall Influence
Xiaobo Sharon Hu is a Chinese-American computer scientist and engineer known for her work on hardware-software integration, power usage, and reliability of embedded systems design, including work on power- and temperature-aware scheduling algorithms. She has also published highly cited work on deep neural networks, the CORDIC algorithm for trigonometric calculations, and clocking of unconventional computer architectures. She is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame.
Go to Profile#732
Leia Stirling
#84251
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Leia Abigail Stirling is the Charles Stark Draper Professor of Aeronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is the co-director of the human systems laboratory. She was elected an American Association for the Advancement of Science Leshner Leadership Institute Fellow in 2019.
Go to Profile#733
Sophie Laurent
#126799
Overall Influence
#734
Dianna Xu
#68836
Overall Influence
Yilun Dianna Xu is a mathematician and computer scientist whose research concerns the computational geometry of curves and surfaces, computer vision, and computer graphics. She is a professor of computer science at Bryn Mawr College where she chairs the computer science department.
Go to Profile#735
Siglinda Perathoner
#127342
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
#736
Sarah E. Pinder
#127459
Overall Influence
#737
Felisa Verdejo
#118538
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
María Felisa Verdejo Maillo , known as Felisa Verdejo, is a university professor in the Department of Computer Languages and Systems at UNED. She is one of the Spanish pioneers in natural language processing and artificial intelligence.
Go to Profile#738
Myra Wilson
#69139
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Myra S. Wilson is a British computer scientist. She is a senior lecturer in computer science at Aberystwyth University, Wales. Her research interests are in the broad area of robotics, and she also teaches in the field.
Go to Profile#739
Andrea Zittel
#31020
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (59 years)
Andrea Zittel is an American artist based in Joshua Tree, CA whose practice encompasses spaces, objects and modes of living in an ongoing investigation that explores the questions "How to live?" and "What gives life meaning?"
Go to Profile#740
Alev Erisir
#53278
Overall Influence
Alev Erisir is a Turkish-American neuroscientist. She is a Professor of Psychology and the Department Chair at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Her primary research areas include synaptic connectivity in the visual and taste systems, neuronal circuit plasticity, and ultrastructural neuroanatomy.
Go to Profile#741
Véronique Cortier
#68565
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Véronique Cortier is a French mathematician and computer scientist specializing in cryptography. Her research has applied mathematical logic in the formal verification of cryptographic protocols, and has included the development of secure electronic voting systems. She has also contributed to the public dissemination of knowledge about cryptography through a sequence of posts on the binaire blog of Le Monde. She is a director of research with CNRS, associated with the Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications at the University of Lorraine in Nancy.
Go to Profile#742
Tawanna Dillahunt
#99205
Overall Influence
Tawanna Dillahunt is an American computer scientist and information scientist based at the University of Michigan School of Information. She runs the Social Innovations Group, a research group that designs, builds, and enhances technologies to solve real-world problems. Her research has been cited over 2,700 times according to Google Scholar.
Go to Profile#743
Tal Malkin
#97023
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Tal Geula Malkin is an Israeli-American cryptographer who works as a professor of computer science at Columbia University, where she heads the Cryptography Lab and the Data Science Institute Cybersecurity Center.
Go to Profile#744
Sarah Sze
#14921
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Sarah Sze is an American artist and professor of visual arts at Columbia University. She has exhibited internationally and her works are in the collections of several major museums. Sze's work explores the role of technology and information in contemporary life utilizing everyday materials. Drawing from Modernist traditions, Sze's work often represents objects caught in suspension.
Go to Profile#745
Elisabeth Oswald
#95844
Overall Influence
Maria Elisabeth Oswald is an Austrian cryptographer known for her work on side-channel attacks including power analysis and on implementations of cryptosystems that are resistant to these attacks. She is a professor at the University of Klagenfurt.
Go to Profile#746
Ellen Riloff
#117063
Overall Influence
Ellen Riloff is an American computer scientist currently serving as a professor at the School of Computing at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics, specifically information extraction, sentiment analysis, semantic class induction, and bootstrapping methods that learn from unannotated texts.
Go to Profile#747
Esther Arkin
#65575
Overall Influence
Esther M. Arkin is an Israeli–American mathematician and computer scientist whose research interests include operations research, computational geometry, combinatorial optimization, and the design and analysis of algorithms. She is a professor of applied mathematics and statistics at Stony Brook University. At Stony Brook, she also directs the undergraduate program in applied mathematics and statistics, and is an affiliated faculty member with the department of computer science.
Go to Profile#748
Marilyn Walker
#106569
Overall Influence
Marilyn A. Walker is an American computer scientist. She is professor of computer science and head of the Natural Language and Dialogue Systems Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz . Her research includes work on computational models of dialogue interaction and conversational agents, analysis of affect, sarcasm and other social phenomena in social media dialogue, acquiring causal knowledge from text, conversational summarization, interactive story and narrative generation, and statistical methods for training the dialogue manager and the language generation engine for dialogue syst...
Go to Profile#749
Ellen Gethner
#71126
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Ellen Gethner is a US mathematician and computer scientist specializing in graph theory who won the Mathematical Association of America's Chauvenet Prize in 2002 with co-authors Stan Wagon and Brian Wick for their paper A stroll through the Gaussian Primes.
Go to Profile#750
Ilona J. Frieden
#129050
Overall Influence
