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,
#951
Jessica Hullman
#88606
Overall Influence
Jessica Hullman is a computer scientist and the Ginni Rometty associate professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University. She is known for her research in Information visualization. Education Hullman graduated magna cum laude from Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Comparative Studies. She obtained a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Writings and Poetics from Naropa University. Hullman received her Master of Science in Information and Ph.D in Information Science from the University of Michigan - School of Information, where she was advised by Eytan Adar. She completed...
Go to Profile#952
Sanni Yaya
#150496
Overall Influence
#953
Barbara Borroni
#150629
Overall Influence
#954
Howardena Pindell
#52564
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Howardena Pindell is an American artist, curator and educator. She is known as a painter and mixed media artist, her work explores texture, color, structures, and the process of making art; it is often political, addressing the intersecting issues of racism, feminism, violence, slavery, and exploitation. She is known for the wide variety of techniques and materials used in her artwork; she has created abstract paintings, collages, "video drawings," and "process art."
Go to Profile#955
Hamideh Afsarmanesh
#150777
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
#956
Jani Macari Pallis
#64888
Overall Influence
Jani Macari Pallis is the founder and CEO of Cislunar Aerodynamics in San Francisco, California. She is also an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Her areas of expertise are aerodynamics, biomedical engineering, and Sports science.
Go to Profile#958
Katja Hose
#147345
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (44 years)
Katja Hose is a professor of computer science at Aalborg University and TU Wien. Education In 2004, Katja Hose completed her master's degree in computer science at the Ilmenau University of Technology in Germany. In 2009 she received her PhD in computer science - also from Ilmenau University of Technology.
Go to Profile#959
Janice M. Reichert
#151287
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#960
Leila Pirhaji
#111582
Overall Influence
1986 - Present (38 years)
Leila Pirhaji is an Iranian computational biologist and tech entrepreneur. She is the CEO and founder of ReviveMed, a biotech company that started up in 2018. She previously worked on artificial intelligence at the Professor Ernest Fraenkel Lab at MIT and at ETH Zürich.
Go to Profile#961
Sonia Fahmy
#117254
Overall Influence
Sonia Amin Fahmy is a computer scientist specializing in computer networking, including network architectures and communication protocols, and particularly known for her work on clustering in wireless ad hoc networks. She is a professor of computer science at Purdue University.
Go to Profile#962
Wendy W. Chapman
#137278
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Wendy Webber Chapman is an American research scientist in biomedical Natural language processing and Information Extraction. In 2019, after serving for six years as Chair of the University of Utah School of Medicine Division of Biomedical Informatics, Chapman left the institution to join the University of Melbourne.
Go to Profile#963
Claudia Linnhoff-Popien
#105128
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Claudia Linnhoff-Popien is a German computer scientist. Professional career Linnhoff-Popien finished her graduate studies in mathematics with focus informatics 1989 at Leipzig University. That followed a teaching and research work at Technical University, Magdeburg. Beginning in 1991 she worked as a research assistant at Aachen University of Technology, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1994. From 1995 to 1997 she did different lectureships at University of Essen. 1997 she worked as a research visitor at the Applied Research Institut of Washington University in St. Louis. In 1998, she finished her...
Go to Profile#964
Sally Fincher
#111358
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Sally A. Fincher is a British Computer Scientist and Emerita Professor of Computing Education at the University of Kent. She was awarded the Suffrage Science award in 2018 the SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education in 2010 and a National Teaching Fellowship in 2005.
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Lori Lamel
#131610
Overall Influence
Lori Faith Lamel is a speech processing researcher known for her work with the TIMIT corpus of American English speech and for her work on voice activity detection, speaker recognition, and other non-linguistic inferences from speech signals. She works for the French National Centre for Scientific Research as a senior research scientist in the Spoken Language Processing Group of the Laboratoire d'Informatique pour la Mécanique et les Sciences de l'Ingénieur.
Go to Profile#966
Christina M. Hultman
#151782
Overall Influence
#967
Jaana Lindström
#151808
Overall Influence
#968
Cleotilde Gonzalez
#110853
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Cleotilde Gonzalez is a Research Professor of Decision Sciences in the Social and Decision Sciences Department. She is also the Research Co-Director of the National NSF AI Institute for Societal Decision Making and the founding director of the Dynamic decision-making laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. Gonzalez is also affiliated with the Security and Privacy Institute , the Center for Behavioral Decision Research , the Human Computer Interaction Institute, the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, and the Center for Neural Basis of Cognition.
Go to Profile#969
M. Joan Alexander
#124874
Overall Influence
M. Joan Alexander is an atmospheric scientist known for her research on gravity waves and their role in atmospheric circulation. Education and career Alexander earned a B.S. in chemistry from Purdue University in 1981 and a M.S. in Astrophysical, Planetary & Atmospheric Sciences from University of Colorado, Boulder in 1989. She then completed her Ph.D. in Astrophysical, Planetary & Atmospheric Sciences in 1992 from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Go to Profile#970
Yingying Chen
#152007
Overall Influence
Yingying Chen is a computer scientist whose research involves mobile computing, the internet of things, the security implications of mobile sensor data, wearable technology, and activity trackers. She is a professor at Rutgers University, where she heads the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and directs the Data Analysis and Information SecuritY Lab.
Go to Profile#971
Nicole Immorlica
#73689
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (46 years)
Nicole Immorlica is a theoretical computer scientist at Microsoft Research, known for her work on algorithmic game theory and locality-sensitive hashing. Education and career Immorlica completed her Ph.D. in 2005 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the joint supervision of David Karger and Erik Demaine. Her dissertation was Computing with Strategic Agents.
Go to Profile#972
Bianca Maria Piraccini
#152383
Overall Influence
#973
Rumi Nakamura
#134841
Overall Influence
Rumi Nakamura is an Earth scientist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She works on solar-terrestrial interactions, with a particular focus on the terrestrial magnetosphere. Nakamura won the 2014 European Geosciences Union Julius Bartels Medal.
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Loreen Olson
#47172
Overall Influence
Loreen Olson is an American scholar of family communication, with an emphasis on gender, communication, and violence. She is an assistant professor for the Communication Studies department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She teaches graduate and undergraduate classes on communication theory, gender communication, relational communication, family communication, qualitative research methods, and interpersonal communication theory. Olson and co-authors Elizabeth A. Baiocchi-Wagner, Jessica M. Wilson-Kratzer, and Sarah E. Symonds published a book entitled The Dark Side of Family Communication.
Go to Profile#975
Stella Pang
#97338
Overall Influence
Stella W. Pang is an engineer known for her work on microfabrication, biomaterials, nanostructures, microelectromechanical systems, and microfluidics. She is Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering at the City University of Hong Kong, Director of the Centre for Biosystems, Neuroscience, and Nanotechnology, and Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering.
Go to Profile#976
Suzette Delaloge
#153358
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
#977
Johanna Rommens
#96184
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Johanna Rommens is a Canadian geneticist who was on the research team which identified and cloned the CFTR gene, which when mutated, is responsible for causing cystic fibrosis . She later discovered the gene responsible for Shwachman-Diamond syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes pancreatic and hematologic problems. She is a Senior Scientist Emeritus at SickKids Research Institute and a professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#978
Gillian Hayes
#144971
Overall Influence
Gillian Rachael Hayes is an American computer scientist. She is the Robert A. and Barbara L. Kleist Professor in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences and Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of the Graduate Division at UC Irvine.
Go to Profile#979
Hannah Wunsch
#153691
Overall Influence
#980
Mitra Jashni
#60806
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (48 years)
Mitra Jashni is an Iranian visual artist and political activist, of Kurdish ethnicity. She works in the mediums of painting, drawing, and sculpture; as well as works as an art teacher, poet, and singer of Iranian contemporary music. She is one of the founders and executive director of Farashgard, an Iranian political party and activist group based in Washington, D.C..
Go to Profile#981
Ruth Misener
#121980
Overall Influence
Ruth Misener is a professor at the Department of Computing, Imperial College London. Her research concentrates on the development of software and optimisation algorithms for energy efficient engineering and biomedical systems.
Go to Profile#982
Jacqueline Suthren Hirst
#25864
Overall Influence
Jacqueline G. Suthren Hirst or Jackie Hirst is a senior lecturer in comparative religion and South Asian studies at Manchester University. She has an MA and PhD from Cambridge University and is a qualified teacher, and taught religious education in a school for five years. She was a senior lecturer at Homerton College, training teachers to teach religious education, before moving to Manchester in 1994.
Go to Profile#983
Miranda Yap
#65443
Overall Influence
1948 - 2015 (67 years)
Miranda Gek Sim Yap , also abbreviated as M.Yap or MGS Yap, was a professor in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department of the National University of Singapore, and the Executive Director of the Bioprocessing Technology Institute at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research of Singapore .
Go to Profile#984
Zoe Laughlin
#50923
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Zoe Laughlin is a British artist, maker and materials engineer. She is the co-founder and Director of the Institute of Making at University College London. She is a regular panelist on the BBC Radio 4 show The Kitchen Cabinet. Laughlin was awarded the 2019 Inspire, Support Achieve Award for Design Engineering from the Institution of Engineering Designers.
Go to Profile#985
Agnes Martin
#4368
Overall Influence
1912 - 2004 (92 years)
Agnes Bernice Martin was an American abstract painter known for her minimalist style and abstract expressionism. Born in Canada, she moved to the United States in 1931, where she pursued higher education and eventually became a U.S. citizen in 1950. Martin's artistic journey began in New York City, where she immersed herself in modern art and developed a deep interest in abstraction. Despite often being labeled a minimalist, she identified more with abstract expressionism. Her work has been defined as an "essay in discretion on inward-ness and silence".
Go to Profile#986
Ann Logan
#154126
Overall Influence
#987
Maria Prins
#154207
Overall Influence
#988
Fosca Giannotti
#154217
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
#989
Assunta Bertaccini
#154240
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
#990
Karen L. Margolis
#154266
Overall Influence
#991
Niki Trigoni
#140475
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Agathoniki Trigoni is a Greek computer scientist who is a professor in the University of Oxford Department of Computer Science and a Fellow of Kellogg College. Trigoni is the Chief Technology Officer of Navenio, a company she founded to provide scalable and accurate indoor location systems. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2022.
Go to Profile#992
Donna H. Ryan
#154432
Overall Influence
#993
Hélène Pellissier
#154521
Overall Influence
#994
Amanda Wixted
#135346
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (43 years)
Amanda Wixted is a video game programmer and founder of Meteor Grove Software. Early life Wixted was born on November 23, 1981, in Paris, France. At the age of two, she moved to Kuwait City, and at the age of nine, to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and at age 15 moved again to attend Stevenson School, a boarding school in Pebble Beach, California. She graduated from Stevenson School in 2000 and attended the University of Arizona where she received a bachelor's degree in computer science.
Go to Profile#995
Katrin Hartmann
#154678
Overall Influence
#996
Ira Wilson
#127958
Overall Influence
Ira B. Wilson is an American physician and scholar of health services and policy. He is currently Professor of Medicine at Brown University's Alpert Medical School and Professor and Chair of Health Services, Policy and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health.
Go to Profile#997
Marina Noris
#155022
Overall Influence
#998
Yanxi Liu
#131493
Overall Influence
Yanxi Liu is a Chinese-American computer scientist specializing in computer vision. She is known for her research on computational symmetry, computational regularity, and the uses of symmetry and regularity in computer vision, as well as on feature selection for motion tracking. She is a professor of computer science at Pennsylvania State University, where she directs the Motion Capture Lab for Smart Health and co-directs the Lab for Perception, Action and Cognition.
Go to Profile#999
Elizabeth Belding
#128769
Overall Influence
Elizabeth Michelle Belding is a computer scientist specializing in mobile computing and wireless networks. She is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Education and career Belding graduated from Florida State University in 1996 with two degrees: one in computer science and a second in applied mathematics. Both degrees were Summa Cum Laude with Honors. She went to the University of California, Santa Barbara on a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and completed her Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering in 2000. Her dissertation, und...
Go to Profile#1000
Gina Adams
#61438
Overall Influence
Gina Adams is an American interdisciplinary artist and activist. Family Gina Adams' parents were Philip F. Adams , born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Elaine Rose Theriault Adams who lived in Kittery, Maine. Her family members operated the Kittery Trading Post in the town.
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