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,
#801
Barbara Hammer
#135698
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
#802
Vicki L. Hanson
#84908
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Vicki Hanson FACM FRSE FBCS, is an American computer scientist noted for her research on human-computer interaction and accessibility and for her leadership in broadening participation in computing. She was named the Chief Executive Officer of the Association for Computing Machinery in 2018 having served as its President from 2016 to 2018.
Go to Profile#803
Orit Peleg
#62970
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (43 years)
Orit Peleg is an Israeli computer scientist, biophysicist and Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department and the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder in Boulder, CO. She is also an External Professor of the Santa Fe Institute. She is known for her work on collective behavior of insects and the biophysics of soft living systems, including honeybees and fireflies. Applications of her work range from human communication, smart-material design, and swarm robotics. She has won national and international awards and prizes, including a Sloan Research Fellowship in...
Go to Profile#804
Susan Gerhart
#122753
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Susan Gerhart is a semi-retired computer scientist. Education Susan Gerhart received her BA in Mathematics from Ohio Wesleyan University, her MS in Communication Sciences from University of Michigan, and her PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. She completed her thesis "Verification of APL Programs" in 1972 under thesis advisor Donald W. Loveland. She credited Sputnik with having inspired her to study science.
Go to Profile#805
Miaofang Chi
#94833
Overall Influence
Miaofang Chi is a distinguished scientist at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences in Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Her primary research interests are understanding interfacial charge transfer and mass transport behavior in energy and quantum materials and systems by advancing and employing novel electron microscopy techniques, such as in situ and cryogenic scanning transmission electron microscopy. She was awarded the 2016 Microscopy Society of America Burton Medal and the 2019 Microanalysis Society Kurt Heinrich Award. She was named to Clarivate's list of Highly Cited Researchers in 2...
Go to Profile#806
Ariela Benigni
#136086
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#807
Sandra A. Edwards
#136343
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
#808
Sherry Towers
#57665
Overall Influence
Sherry Towers is an American and Canadian statistician and data scientist working as an independent consultant and an affiliate scholar with the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany following a seven year position as a faculty research associate at Arizona State University. Towers is perhaps best known for her study of the contagion effect of mass shootings. She is also the founder and owner of Towers Consulting LLC, a consulting company that provides visual analytics, data mining, applied statistics, and computational modeling services to industry, academia, and t...
Go to Profile#809
Larissa Shamseer
#136489
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#810
Angela Y. Wu
#108718
Overall Influence
Angela Yuen Wu is an American computer scientist, a professor emerita at American University. She is known for her research in computer vision and computational geometry, and especially for her highly cited publications on k-means clustering and nearest neighbor search. Other topics in her research include embeddings of tree-structured parallel systems into the hypercube internetwork topology and voxel-based object representations.
Go to Profile#811
Ani Nenkova
#110131
Overall Influence
Ani Nenkova is Principal Scientist at Adobe Research, currently on leave from her position as an Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on computational linguistics and artificial intelligence, with an emphasis on developing computational methods for analysis of text quality and style, discourse, affect recognition, and summarization.
Go to Profile#812
Valeria De Antonellis
#129486
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Valeria De Antonellis is Professor Emeritus at University of Brescia, Italy, since February 2021. Previously she was a professor of computer science and engineering at University of Brescia, Italy, where she led the research group on "Databases, Information Systems and Web" at Department of Information Engineering.
Go to Profile#813
Anuradha Annaswamy
#102924
Overall Influence
Anuradha M. Annaswamy is a computer scientist noted for her research on adaptive control theory and smart grids. Since 1996, she has worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Currently, Annaswamy is a senior research scientist at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and directs the Active Adaptive Control Laboratory .
Go to Profile#814
Sara Gandini
#137229
Overall Influence
#815
Jane Grimson
#120238
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Jane Grimson , is an Irish computer engineer. She is Fellow Emerita and Pro-Chancellor at Trinity College Dublin. Education Grimson attended Alexandra College Dublin. She was the first woman to graduate in engineering from Trinity College Dublin obtaining a first class honors degree and gold medal in 1970. She received a master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Toronto in 1971, and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1981.
Go to Profile#816
Chiarella Sforza
#137393
Overall Influence
#817
Jeannine Mosely
#65954
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Jeannine Mosely holds a Ph.D. in EECS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is known for her work as an origami artist. She is best known for her modular origami designs, especially her work using business cards. She has organized several crowd-sourced origami projects built from tens of thousands of business cards involving hundred of volunteers for each project. She is also known for her minimalist origami designs , curved crease models, and her invention of "or-egg-ami" models made from egg cartons.
Go to Profile#818
Rosario Scopelliti
#137486
Overall Influence
#819
Freda Stevenson
#126836
Overall Influence
Freda Kathryn Stevenson is a British immunologist and Professor at the University of Southampton. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2000, and was the first British researcher to be awarded the American Society of Hematology Henry M. Stratton Medal.
Go to Profile#820
Christine Harrison
#113274
Overall Influence
Christine J. Harrison is a Professor of Childhood Cancer Cytogenetics at Newcastle University. She works on acute leukemia and used cytogenetics to optimise treatment protocols. Early life and education Harrison attended an all girls school, where she was encouraged to become a nurse or a teacher. Harrison went to work at GlaxoSmithKline, before returning to education and securing her A-Levels. She was appointed as a research technician at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research. She was encouraged to attend university, and studied zoology at the University of Manchester. She remained there for her postgraduate studies, and earned a PhD in cell biology in 1978.
Go to Profile#821
Alice S. Carter
#137917
Overall Influence
#822
Margarita Chli
#112637
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Margarita Chli is an assistant professor and leader of the Vision for Robotics Lab at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. Chli is a leader in the field of computer vision and robotics and was on the team of researchers to develop the first fully autonomous helicopter with onboard localization and mapping. Chli is also the Vice Director of the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. Her research currently focuses on developing visual perception and intelligence in flying autonomous robotic systems.
Go to Profile#823
Deborah Joseph
#53947
Overall Influence
Deborah A. Joseph is an American computer scientist known for her research in computational geometry, computational biology, and computational complexity theory. She is a professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Go to Profile#824
Ebba Nexø
#138139
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
#825
Sharon Daniel
#92400
Overall Influence
Sharon Daniel is a professor in the Film and Digital Media department and serves as chair for the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Along with teaching classes about digital media, Daniel does field research for new media projects. Her essays have been published in analytical and research journals such as Sarai and Leonardo. Selected projects of Daniel's have been presented at festivals, including the Lincoln Center Festival, the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Ars Electronica, and the Corcoran Biennial.
Go to Profile#826
Gunilla Borgefors
#127769
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Gunilla Borgefors is a Swedish computer scientist specializing in image processing, including distance transforms, topological skeletonization, and edge detection. She is a professor emerita in the Department of Information Technology at Uppsala University, associated with the Centre for Image Analysis.
Go to Profile#827
Susan Bee
#44029
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Susan Bee is an American painter, editor, and book artist, who lives in New York City. In 2015, "Photograms and Altered Photos from the 1970s" were exhibited at Southfirst Gallery in Brooklyn. She had one solo show at Accola Griefen Gallery and nine solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery in New York. She has a B.A. from Barnard College and a M.A. in Art from Hunter College. She has taught at the School of Visual Arts MFA in Art Criticism and Writing program. Bee has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at Pratt Institute. In 2014, Susan Bee was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.
Go to Profile#828
Deborah J. Bowen
#138615
Overall Influence
#829
Kiri Wagstaff
#125281
Overall Influence
Kiri Lou Wagstaff is an American computer scientist and planetary scientist whose research involves the use of machine learning in the analysis of data and autonomous control of planetary rovers and other space probes. She is a senior instructor in electrical engineering and computer science at Oregon State University.
Go to Profile#830
Susan Rankaitis
#65931
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Susan Rankaitis is an American multimedia artist working primarily in painting, photography and drawing. Rankaitis began her career in the 1970s as an abstract painter. Visiting the Art Institute of Chicago while in graduate school, she had a transformative encounter with the photograms of the artist László Moholy-Nagy , whose abstract works of the 1920s and 1940s she saw as "both painting and photography." Rankaitis began to develop her own experimental methods for producing abstract and conceptual artworks related both to painting and photography.
Go to Profile#831
Nicky J. Welton
#138941
Overall Influence
#832
Taina Rantanen
#138960
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
#833
Karen Petrie
#92694
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Areas of Specialization: Constraints Programming, Artifical Intelligence Karen Elizabeth Jefferson Petrie was born in the UK. She is currently Reader in the Department of Computing in the School of Science and Engineering at the University of Dundee in Scotland, as well as Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching of the same School. Petrie has stated that she first learned to program computers on a Commodore 64 when she was eight years old. Petrie received her bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2001 from the University of St Andrews, and her PhD in artificial intelligence in 2004 from the University of Huddersfield.
Go to Profile#834
Maggie Cheng
#70770
Overall Influence
Maggie Xiaoyan Cheng is an applied mathematician and computer scientist who works as a professor of applied mathematics at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she directs the Center for Interdisciplinary Scientific Computation. Her research interests include cyber security and Machine Learning.
Go to Profile#835
Catuscia Palamidessi
#131650
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Catuscia Palamidessi is a computer scientist whose research topics have included differential privacy, location obfuscation, fairness in machine learning, the logic of concurrent systems, and the design of programming languages that combine logic programming and functional programming. Originally from Italy, she has worked in Italy, the US, and France, where she is a director of research for the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation .
Go to Profile#836
Alexandra Boer Kimball
#139273
Overall Influence
#837
Cornelia Boldyreff
#114642
Overall Influence
Cornelia Boldyreff is very active in encouraging girls into computing, is a Council Member of The BCS, The Chartered Institute of IT , a Committee member of the BCSWomen and a visiting professor in the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Greenwich in London.
Go to Profile#838
Alla Sheffer
#121671
Overall Influence
Alla Sheffer is a Canadian researcher in computer graphics, geometric modeling, geometry processing, and mesh generation, particularly known for her research on mesh parameterization and angle-based flattening. She is currently a professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia.
Go to Profile#839
Barna Saha
#117140
Overall Influence
Barna Saha is an Indian-American theoretical computer scientist whose research interests include algorithmic applications of the probabilistic method, probabilistic databases, fine-grained complexity, and the analysis of big data. She is an associate professor and Jacobs Faculty Scholar in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.
Go to Profile#840
Loreto Carmona
#139771
Overall Influence
#841
Mary Fernández
#115323
Overall Influence
Mary Fernández is an American computer scientist and activist for women and minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics . She is the president of MentorNet, an organization that helps mentors and students develop mentoring relationships.
Go to Profile#842
Susan Hagness
#110047
Overall Influence
Susan Carol Hagness is an American electrical engineer and applied electromagnetics researcher. She is the Philip Dunham Reed Professor and Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Go to Profile#843
Sara Bals
#127465
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Sara Bals is a Belgian nanoscientist known for her research on electron tomography and its application in the study of nanomaterials such as perovskite nanocrystals. She is a professor of electron microscopy for materials science at the University of Antwerp.
Go to Profile#844
Sheila Graber
#74949
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Sheila Graber is a British animator, artist and Visiting Professor at the University of Sunderland. She animated the children's television series Paddington, has taught in schools and universities, and has won numerous awards.
Go to Profile#845
Nkiru Nzegwu
#39154
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Nkiru Nzegwu is a Nigerian philosopher, painter, author, curator and art historian. She is Distinguished Professor for Research at State University of New York at Binghamton. Among Dr. Nzegwu’s areas of expertise are African aesthetics, philosophy, African feminist issues, multicultural studies in art, and digital publishing.
Go to Profile#846
Betye Saar
#14059
Overall Influence
1926 - Present (98 years)
Betye Irene Saar is an African American artist known for her work in the medium of assemblage. Saar is a visual storyteller and an accomplished printmaker. Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, which engaged myths and stereotypes about race and femininity. Her work is considered highly political, as she challenged negative ideas about African Americans throughout her career; Saar is best known for her art work that critiques American racism toward Blacks.
Go to Profile#847
Donna Harman
#110034
Overall Influence
Donna K. Harman is an American information retrieval researcher. She is a group leader in the Retrieval Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Harman won the Tony Kent Strix award in 1999.
Go to Profile#848
Usha Chakravarthy
#140179
Overall Influence
#849
Leila De Floriani
#132730
Overall Influence
Leila De Floriani is an American-Italian computer scientist and a professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. She was formerly a professor at the University of Genova . She was the 2020 IEEE Computer Society President and the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics from 2015 to 2018.
Go to Profile#850
Lauren Wilcox
#131311
Overall Influence
Lauren G. Wilcox is an American professor and researcher in responsible AI, human–computer interaction, and health informatics, known for research on enabling community participation in technology design and development and her prior contributions to health informatics systems.
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