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 people in Computer Science,
#5001
Karim M Khan
#122543
Overall Influence
#5002
Hak Yong Kim
#122559
Overall Influence
#5003
Josep Domingo Ferrer
#122578
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Josep Domingo Ferrer is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and an ICREA-Acadèmia Researcher at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Catalonia, where he holds the UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy. He was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012 for contributions to privacy, security, and functionality in statistical databases.
Go to Profile#5004
Wilfried Elmenreich
#102871
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Wilfried Elmenreich is an Austrian researcher and professor of Smart Grids at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt. Biography Wilfried Elmenreich studied computer science at the Vienna University of Technology where he received his master's degree in 1998. He became a research and teaching assistant at the Institute of Computer Engineering at Vienna University of Technology in 1999. He received his doctoral degree with distinction on the topic of time-triggered sensor fusion in 2002. From 1999 to 2007 he was the chief developer of the time-triggered fieldbus protocol TTP/A and the Smart Transducer Interface standard.
Go to Profile#5005
Paolo Petta
#106989
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Paolo Petta is an Italian computer and cognitive scientist who is the head of the Intelligent Software Agents and New Media Research Group at the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence. His main research areas include cognitive modelling of emotions, human aspects in interactions with artificial systems and coordination of situated cognitive systems.
Go to Profile#5006
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#5007
Steven P. Tipper
#122634
Overall Influence
#5008
Tom Coenye
#122644
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
#5009
Jan Skov Pedersen
#122663
Overall Influence
#5010
Bjørk Hammer
#122671
Overall Influence
#5011
Satoshi Kuwabara
#122680
Overall Influence
#5012
George Rickey
#14733
Overall Influence
1907 - 2002 (95 years)
George Warren Rickey was an American kinetic sculptor. Early life and education Rickey was born on June 6, 1907, in South Bend, Indiana. When Rickey was still a child, his father, an executive with Singer Sewing Machine Company, moved the family to Glasgow, Scotland, in 1913. They lived near the river Clyde, and George learned to sail around the outer islands on the family's sailboat.
Go to Profile#5013
Andrew Blowers
#41126
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Andrew Thomas Blowers is a British geographer and environmentalist and Emeritus Professor of the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences at the Open University. Biography Blowers attended Colchester Royal Grammar School and won an Open Exhibition to read Geography at Durham University. After periods teaching at Newcastle Polytechnic and Kingston Polytechnic he joined the Open University, where he eventually became Dean of Social Sciences.
Go to Profile#5014
En-hua Wu
#122717
Overall Influence
#5015
Fabio Remondino
#122728
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
#5016
Takayuki Asahara
#122756
Overall Influence
#5017
Junichi Yamagishi
#122770
Overall Influence
#5018
Plamen Parvanov Angelov
#122771
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
#5019
Armando Tripodi
#122817
Overall Influence
#5020
Celia Pearce
#51598
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 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#5021
Federico Lombardi
#122866
Overall Influence
#5022
John Wells
#17763
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
John Marcum Wells is an American producer, writer, and director. He is best known for his role as showrunner and executive producer of the television series ER, Third Watch, The West Wing, Southland, Shameless, Animal Kingdom, and American Woman, as well as the miniseries Maid and the upcoming series Rescue: HI-Surf. His company, John Wells Productions, is currently based at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California. Wells is also a labor leader, having served as president of the Writers Guild of America, West from 1999 to 2001 and from 2009 to 2011. Wells serves on the Motion Picture & Television Fund Board of Governors.
Go to Profile#5023
Ayesha Kausar
#122887
Overall Influence
#5024
Jef C. Verhoeven
#122907
Overall Influence
#5025
Mamoun Alazab
#122915
Overall Influence
#5026
Douglas C Bauer
#122937
Overall Influence
#5027
Marie-Francine Moens
#118655
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 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#5028
Primavera De Filippi
#80746
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 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#5029
Jong Hyuk Park
#123014
Overall Influence
#5030
Andrei V. Alexandrov
#123021
Overall Influence
#5031
Richard Arthur Bolt
#123030
Overall Influence
#5032
Natarajan Venkatraman
#123060
Overall Influence
#5033
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#5034
Mira Schor
#57489
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 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#5035
John Olsen
#19033
Overall Influence
1928 - 2023 (95 years)
John Henry Olsen AO OBE was an Australian artist and winner of the 2005 Archibald Prize. Olsen's primary subject of work was landscape. Early life and training John Olsen was born in Newcastle on 21 January 1928. He moved to Bondi Beach with his family in 1935 and began a lifelong fascination with Sydney Harbour. He attended St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill.
Go to Profile#5036
Mitsuru Hashida
#123124
Overall Influence
#5037
Alexander Kapp
#31899
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Alexander Kapp is a German dermatologist and allergist. He was chairman and medical director of the department of dermatology and allergy at the Hannover Medical School until his retirement in 2022. He is known for his work in the field of pathophysiology of inflammatory skin diseases , his research on neuro-immunological interactions in allergic inflammation and on the role of eosinophilic granulocytes in allergy and dermatology.
Go to Profile#5038
Zhixiong Li
#123132
Overall Influence
#5039
Dawei Ma
#123138
Overall Influence
#5040
Joseph Lau
#123139
Overall Influence
#5041
Hiroshi Motoda
#123144
Overall Influence
#5042
Arnoud Sonnenberg
#123154
Overall Influence
#5043
Tuncer Ören
#80547
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Tuncer Ören is Turkish Canadian systems engineer, professor emeritus of Computer Science at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Ottawa, Canada, and Director, The McLeod Modeling and Simulation Network of the SCS. He is known for his contributions to the methodology of modelling and simulation.
Go to Profile#5044
Kung Yao
#94712
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Kung Yao is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Electrical Engineering Department of UCLA known for his contributions in Communication Theory, Signal and array processing, and Systolic algorithms...
Go to Profile#5045
Krzysztof Czarnecki
#123170
Overall Influence
#5046
Marco Ferrari
#123172
Overall Influence
#5047
Alex Graves
#123183
Overall Influence
#5048
Paul Hjemdahl
#123188
Overall Influence
#5049
Ann F. Chambers
#123189
Overall Influence
#5050
Mohamedally Kurmoo
#123193
Overall Influence
