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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Computer Science,

#1

Grace Hopper

#159

Overall Influence

1906 - 1992 (86 years)

Grace Brewster Hopper was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.

#2

Barbara Liskov

#666

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Barbara Liskov is an American computer scientist who has made pioneering contributions to programming languages and distributed computing. Her notable work includes the introduction of abstract data types and the accompanying principle of data abstraction, along with the Liskov substitution principle, which applies these ideas to object-oriented programming, subtyping, and inheritance. Her work was recognized with the 2008 Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science.

#3

Fei-Fei Li

#1176

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Fei-Fei Li is an American computer scientist, who was born in China and is known for establishing ImageNet, the dataset that enabled rapid advances in computer vision in the 2010s. She is the Sequoia Capital Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and former board director at Twitter. Li is a Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, and a Co-Director of the Stanford Vision and Learning Lab. She served as the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 2013 to 2018.

#4

Shafi Goldwasser

Shafi Goldwasser

#895

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

#5

Daphne Koller

#1375

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

#6

Jennifer Widom

#2148

Overall Influence

Jennifer Widom is an American computer scientist known for her work in database systems and data management. She is notable for foundational contributions to semi-structured data management and data stream management systems. Since 2017, Widom is the dean of the School of Engineering and professor of computer science at Stanford University. Her honors include the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science and multiple lifetime achievement awards from the Association for Computing Machinery.

#7

Jean E. Sammet

#2171

Overall Influence

1928 - 2017 (89 years)

Jean E. Sammet was an American computer scientist who developed the FORMAC programming language in 1962. She was also one of the developers of the influential COBOL programming language. She received her B.A. in Mathematics from Mount Holyoke College in 1948 and her M.A. in Mathematics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1949. She received an honorary D.Sc. from Mount Holyoke College in 1978.

#8

Margaret Boden

#1206

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Margaret Ann Boden is a Research Professor of Cognitive Science in the Department of Informatics at the University of Sussex, where her work embraces the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive and computer science.

#9

Monica S. Lam

#3923

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Monica Sin-Ling Lam is an American computer scientist. She is a professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. Professional biography Monica Lam received a B.Sc. from University of British Columbia in 1980 and a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1987.

#10

Tin Kam Ho

#4237

Overall Influence

Tin Kam Ho is a computer scientist at IBM Research with contributions to machine learning, data mining, and classification. Ho is noted for introducing random decision forests in 1995, and for her pioneering work in ensemble learning and data complexity analysis. She is an IEEE fellow and IAPR fellow.

#11

Susan Dumais

#4358

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Susan Dumais is an American computer scientist who is a leader in the field of information retrieval, and has been a significant contributor to Microsoft's search technologies. According to Mary Jane Irwin, who heads the Athena Lecture awards committee, “Her sustained contributions have shaped the thinking and direction of human-computer interaction and information retrieval."

#12

Bonnie Nardi

#2001

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Bonnie A. Nardi is an emeritus professor of the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where she led the TechDec research lab in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction and computer-supported cooperative work. She is well known for her work on activity theory, interaction design, games, social media, and society and technology. She was elected to the ACM CHI academy in 2013. She retired in 2018.

#13

Rina Dechter

#3722

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Rina Dechter is a distinguished professor of computer science in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Her research is on automated reasoning in artificial intelligence focusing on probabilistic and constraint-based reasoning. In 2013, she was elected a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.

#14

Cynthia Dwork

#2784

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Cynthia Dwork is an American computer scientist best known for her contributions to cryptography, distributed computing, and algorithmic fairness. She is one of the inventors of differential privacy and proof-of-work.

#15

Kathleen Booth

#2769

Overall Influence

1922 - 2022 (100 years)

Kathleen Hylda Valerie Booth was a British computer scientist and mathematician who wrote the first assembly language and designed the assembler and autocode for the first computer systems at Birkbeck College, University of London. She helped design three different machines including the ARC , SEC , and APEC.

#16

Radia Perlman

#2851

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Radia Joy Perlman is an American computer programmer and network engineer. She is a major figure in assembling the networks and technology to enable what we now know as the internet. She is most famous for her invention of the Spanning Tree Protocol , which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges, while working for Digital Equipment Corporation, thus earning her nickname "Mother of the Internet". Her innovations have made a huge impact on how networks self-organize and move data. She also made large contributions to many other areas of network design and standardization: for exampl...

#17

Nancy Lynch

#4885

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

#18

Adele Goldberg

#4794

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Adele Goldberg is an American computer scientist. She was one of the co-developers of the programming language Smalltalk-80 and of various concepts related to object-oriented programming while a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center , in the 1970s.

#19

Timnit Gebru

#4545

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (41 years)

Timnit Gebru is an Eritrean Ethiopian-born political activist and computer scientist who works on algorithmic bias and data mining. She is an advocate for diversity in technology and co-founder of Black in AI, a community of Black researchers working in artificial intelligence . She is the founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute .

#20

Jeannette Wing

#5463

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Jeannette Marie Wing is Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, where she is also a professor of computer science. Until June 30, 2017, she was Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research with oversight of its core research laboratories around the world and Microsoft Research Connections. Prior to 2013, she was the President's Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. She also served as assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the NSF from 2007 to 2010. She was a...

#21

Diane Greene

#2523

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Diane B. Greene is an American technology entrepreneur and executive. Greene started her career as a naval architect before transitioning to the tech industry, where she was a founder and CEO of VMware from 1998 until 2008. She was a board director of Google and CEO of Google Cloud from 2015 until 2019. She was also the co-founder and CEO of two startups, Bebop and VXtreme, which were acquired by Google and Microsoft, for $380 million and $75 million.

#22

Latanya Sweeney

Latanya Sweeney

#4629

Overall Influence

Latanya Arvette Sweeney is an American computer scientist. She is the Daniel Paul Professor of the Practice of Government and Technology at the Harvard Kennedy School and in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. She is the founder and director of the Public Interest Tech Lab, founded in 2021 with a $3 million grant from the Ford Foundation as well as the Data Privacy Lab. She is the current Faculty Dean in Currier House at Harvard.

#23

Dina Katabi

#5052

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Dina Katabi is the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and the director of the MIT Wireless Center. Academic biography Katabi received a bachelor's degree from the University of Damascus in 1995 and M.S and Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT in 1998 and 2003 respectively. In 2003, Katabi joined MIT, where she holds the title of Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She is the co-director of the MIT Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing and a principal investigator at MIT's Computer Science a...

#24

Pattie Maes

#6238

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Pattie Maes is an American scientist. She is a professor in MIT's program in Media Arts and Sciences. She founded and directed the MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group. Previously, she founded and ran the Software Agents group. She served for several years as both the head and associate head of the Media Lab's academic program. Prior to joining the Media Lab, Maes was a visiting professor and a research scientist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. She holds bachelor's and PhD degrees in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.

#25

Corinna Cortes

#7144

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Corinna Cortes is a Danish computer scientist known for her contributions to machine learning. She is a Vice President at Google Research in New York City. Cortes is an ACM Fellow and a recipient of the Paris Kanellakis Award for her work on theoretical foundations of support vector machines.

#26

Karen Spärck Jones

Karen Spärck Jones

#5413

Overall Influence

1935 - 2007 (72 years)

Karen Ida Boalth Spärck Jones was a self-taught programmer and a pioneering British computer scientist responsible for the concept of inverse document frequency , a technology that underlies most modern search engines. She was an advocate for women in the field of computer science. She even came up with a slogan: “Computing is too important to be left to men.” In 2019, The New York Times published her belated obituary in its series Overlooked, calling her "a pioneer of computer science for work combining statistics and linguistics, and an advocate for women in the field." From 2008, to recog...

#27

Nadia Magnenat Thalmann

Nadia Magnenat Thalmann

#5745

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Nadia Magnenat Thalmann is a computer graphics scientist and robotician and is the founder and head of MIRALab at the University of Geneva. She has chaired the Institute for Media Innovation at Nanyang Technological University , Singapore from 2009 to 2021.

#28

Susan Owicki

#8027

Overall Influence

Susan Owicki is a computer scientist, Association for Computing Machinery Fellow, and one of the founding members of the Systers mailing list for women in computing. She changed careers in the early 2000s and became a licensed marriage and family therapist.

#29

Anita Borg

#7379

Overall Influence

1949 - 2003 (54 years)

Anita Borg was an American computer scientist celebrated for advocating for women’s representation and professional advancement in technology. She founded the Institute for Women and Technology and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

#30

Wendy Hall

#5410

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Dame Wendy Hall is a British computer scientist. She is Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton. Early life and education Wendy Hall was born in west London and educated at Ealing Grammar School for Girls. She studied for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in mathematics at the University of Southampton. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree in 1974, and her Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1977. Her doctoral thesis was titled Automorphisms and coverings of Klein surfaces. She later completed a Master of Science degree in Computing at City University ...

#31

Ruzena Bajcsy

#3783

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Ruzena Bajcsy is an American engineer and computer scientist who specializes in robotics. She is professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is also director emerita of CITRIS .

#32

Kathy Pham

#7474

Overall Influence

Kathy Pham is a Vietnamese American computer scientist and product management executive. She has held roles in leadership, engineering, product management, and data science at Google, IBM, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Harris Healthcare, and served as a founding product and engineering member of the United States Digital Service in the Executive Office of the President of the United States at The White House. Pham was the Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Product and Engineering at the Federal Trade Commission, and the inaugural Executive Director of the National AI Advisory Committe...

#33

Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh

#8838

Overall Influence

Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh is an Iranian British academic who is a professor at University College London. She was awarded a senior research fellowship at the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2022. Early life and education Sadrzadeh is from Iran. She received her undergraduate and master's degrees at Sharif University of Technology. After earning her master's degree Sadrzadeh moved to Canada. She was a doctoral researcher first at the University of Ottawa, where she was awarded an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, a University of Ottawa Excellence Scholarship, and a Canada Female Doctoral Student Award, and then at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

#34

Manuela M. Veloso

Manuela M. Veloso

#7356

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

#35

Frances Yao

#6408

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Frances Foong Chu Yao is a Taiwanese-born American mathematician and theoretical computer scientist. She is currently a Chair Professor at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences of Tsinghua University. She was Chair Professor and Head of the Department of computer science at the City University of Hong Kong, where she is now an honorary professor.

#36

Kathleen Antonelli

Kathleen Antonelli

#3536

Overall Influence

1921 - 2006 (85 years)

Kathleen Rita Antonelli , known as Kay McNulty, was an Irish computer programmer and one of the six original programmers of the ENIAC, one of the first general-purpose electronic digital computers. The other five ENIAC programmers were Betty Holberton, Ruth Teitelbaum, Frances Spence, Marlyn Meltzer, and Jean Bartik.

#37

Lisa Anthony

#9312

Overall Influence

Lisa Anthony is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering at the University of Florida. She is also the director of the Intelligent Natural Interaction Technology Laboratory . Her research interests revolve around developing natural user interfaces to allow for greater human-computer interaction, specifically for children as they develop their cognitive and physical abilities.

#38

Frances Allen

#6595

Overall Influence

1932 - 2020 (88 years)

Frances Elizabeth Allen was an American computer scientist and pioneer in the field of optimizing compilers. Allen was the first woman to become an IBM Fellow, and in 2006 became the first woman to win the Turing Award. Her achievements include seminal work in compilers, program optimization, and parallelization. She worked for IBM from 1957 to 2002 and subsequently was a Fellow Emerita.

#39

Dana Angluin

#7464

Overall Influence

Dana Angluin is a professor emeritus of computer science at Yale University. She is known for foundational work in computational learning theory and distributed computing. Education Angluin received her B.A. and Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley. Her thesis, entitled "An application of the theory of computational complexity to the study of inductive inference" was one of the first works to apply complexity theory to the field of inductive inference. Angluin joined the faculty at Yale in 1979.

#40

Rohini Kesavan Srihari

#9599

Overall Influence

Rohini Kesavan Srihari is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of Content Savvy Inc., a high-technology company in Western New York. Prior to this she founded Cymfony Inc., which specializes in brand analytics. She also founded Cymfony Net Private Limited in Bangalore, India. She also holds a position as Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA.

#41

Angie Jones

#8798

Overall Influence

Angie Jones is a software engineer and automation architect who specializes in software testing and development. Jones has contributed to several open-source testing tools and libraries, including Selenium and Appium.

#42

Barbara Engelhardt

#9433

Overall Influence

Barbara Elizabeth Engelhardt is an American computer scientist and specialist in bioinformatics. Working as a Professor at Stanford University, her work has focused on latent variable models, exploratory data analysis for genomic data, and QTLs. In 2021, she was awarded the Overton Prize by the International Society for Computational Biology.

#43

Sarita Schoenebeck

#9783

Overall Influence

Sarita Yardi Schoenebeck is an American computer scientist at the University of Michigan, where she serves as Director of the Living Online Lab. Her research considers human–computer interactions, social media and social computing. She was awarded the University of Michigan School of Information Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award in 2017 for her work on LGBTQ+ families and online communities.

#44

Elaine Weyuker

#7257

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Elaine Jessica Weyuker is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow , and an AT&T Fellow at Bell Labs for research in software metrics and testing as well as elected to the National Academy of Engineering. She is the author of over 130 papers in journals and refereed conference proceedings.

#45

Gloria Townsend

#9842

Overall Influence

Gloria Townsend is an American computer scientist and professor in the department of Computer Science at DePauw University in Indiana. She is known for her work in evolutionary computation and her involvement with women in computing. She has served on the executive committee of the Association for Computing Machinery Council on Women in Computing. She is the author of One Hundred One Ideas for Small Regional Celebrations of Women in Computing. In 2013, she received the Mr. and Mrs. Fred C. Tucker Jr. Distinguished Career Award for notable contributions to DePauw through her commitments to s...

#46

Judy Goldsmith

#9824

Overall Influence

Judith Anne Goldsmith is a computer scientist whose publications span a wide range of topics including artificial intelligence, computational complexity theory, decision theory, and computer science education. She is a professor of computer science at the University of Kentucky.

#47

Mary Jane Irwin

#9386

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Mary Jane Irwin is an Emerita Evan Pugh Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. She has been on the faculty at Penn State since 1977. She is an international expert in computer architecture. Her research and teaching interests include computer architecture, embedded and mobile computing systems design, power and reliability aware design, and emerging technologies in computing systems.

#48

Susan L. Graham

Susan L. Graham

#8182

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Susan Lois Graham is an American computer scientist. Graham is the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Computer Science Division of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

#49

Lenore Blum

#4928

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

#50

Cynthia Breazeal

Cynthia Breazeal

#6753

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Cynthia Breazeal is an American robotics scientist and entrepreneur. She is a former chief scientist and chief experience officer of Jibo, a company she co-founded in 2012 that developed personal assistant robots. Currently, she is a professor of media arts and sciences at MIT and the director of the Personal Robots group at the Media Lab. Her most recent work has focused on the theme of living everyday life in the presence of AI, and gradually gaining insight into the long-term impacts of social robots.

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