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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Computer Science,
#5051
Hsiao‐dong Chiang
#123206
Overall Influence
#5052
Maurice Noble
#32173
Overall Influence
1910 - 2001 (91 years)
Maurice James Noble was an American animation production designer, background artist and layout designer whose contributions to the industry spanned more than 60 years. He was a long-time associate and right-hand man of animation director Chuck Jones, especially at Warner Bros. in the 1950s. His work contributed to such cartoon classics as Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, What's Opera, Doc? and the Road Runner series.
Go to Profile#5053
Hanoch Daniel Wagner
#123241
Overall Influence
#5054
João Arménio Correia Martins
#48228
Overall Influence
1951 - 2008 (57 years)
João Arménio Correia Martins was born on November 11, 1951, at the southern town of Olhão in Portugal. He attended high school at the Liceu Nacional de Faro which he completed in 1969. Afterwards João Martins moved to Lisbon where he was graduate student of Civil Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico until 1976. He was a research assistant and assistant instructor at IST until 1981. Subsequently, he entered the graduate school in the College of Engineering, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics of The University of Texas at Austin, USA. There he obtained a MSc in 1...
Go to Profile#5055
Shoshana Wodak
#65229
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 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#5056
Hans Peter Hahn
#41350
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Hans Peter Hahn is a German ethnologist, member of the board of the and program officer of the 'Franco-German Master of Arts : Ethnology and its German-French perspectives' . Biography From 1984 to 1989 Hans Peter Hahn studied ethnology, archeology and biology at the Goethe University Frankfurt. From 1989 to 1994 he was a research associate in the collaborative research program Culture and Environment in West African savanna . From 1995 to 1996 he studied as a postdoc at the graduate school Intercultural Relations in Africa at the University of Bayreuth where he worked from 1996 to 2006 as a research assistant at the Institute for Ethnology.
Go to Profile#5057
Justin Zobel
#123310
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
#5058
Igor Linkov
#123317
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
#5059
Olivier Sitbon
#123323
Overall Influence
#5060
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#5061
Danny Hillis
#101136
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
William Daniel Hillis is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and computer scientist, who pioneered parallel computers and their use in artificial intelligence. He founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a parallel supercomputer manufacturer, and subsequently was Vice President of Research and Disney Fellow at Walt Disney Imagineering.
Go to Profile#5062
Sebastian Amigorena
#82564
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Sebastian Amigorena is an Argentinian-French immunologist and a Team Leader at the Institut Curie. Education and career Sebastian Amigorena was born in 1960 in Buenos Aires. He studied biochemistry at Paris Diderot University, earning his Ph.D. in 1990 under the supervision of Wolf H. Fridman, with a thesis titled "FcR expression in B lymphocytes". He then went on to a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Ira Mellman at Yale Medical School. In 1995, he joined the faculty of the Institut Curie as a team leader, and is now director of the laboratory of Immunity and Cancer. He was elected...
Go to Profile#5063
Martin Fassnacht
#123384
Overall Influence
#5064
Mario Paolo Colombo
#123385
Overall Influence
#5065
Chittoor V. Ramamoorthy
#93511
Overall Influence
1926 - 2016 (90 years)
Chittoor V. Ramamoorthy was an Indian American computer scientist, computer engineer and educator whose work had many implications in engineering, computer science, and software engineering. Together with Raymond T. Yeh, he is given credit for the early establishment of the discipline of software engineering. He had a large following worldwide with whom he actively collaborated until the last few months of his life. Advances made during these collaborations included the exploration of transdisciplinary methods and the development of a science to support future complex systems design.
Go to Profile#5066
Jae Sung Lee
#123401
Overall Influence
#5067
Bedrich Benes
#109076
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Bedrich Benes is a computer scientist and a researcher in computer graphics. Academic positions He is a professor of computer science at Purdue University. He was a member of numerous program committees of various conferences, including ACM SIGGRAPH and Eurographics and he was a papers chair of Eurographics 2017. Dr. Benes is editor-in-chief of Graphical Models journal and he was editor-in-chief of Computer Graphics Forum . He is associate editor of Computers & Graphics., IEEE Transactions on Games, and in Silico Plants. He worked at Purdue Computer Graphics Technology from 2005-2021, where he held a named professorship .
Go to Profile#5068
Greg Johnson
#92569
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Greg Johnson is an American video game designer who has worked for Binary Systems and Electronic Arts, was co-founder with Mark Voorsanger of ToeJam & Earl Productions Inc., and in 2006 founded his own company, HumaNature Studios. He is known for the iconic ToeJam & Earl series , and his design credits additionally include Starflight , Game of the Year Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula , the multi-award-winning Orly's Draw-A-Story , Kung Fu Panda World , and Doki-Doki Universe , Back in the Groove ,
Go to Profile#5069
Robin Wood
#123414
Overall Influence
#5070
Nasir D. Memon
#123424
Overall Influence
#5071
Diana Anderson
#117916
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 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#5072
Prem Lal Joshi
#51863
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Prem Lal Joshi is an Indian educationalist, scholar, author and writer for over four decades and has worked in several countries. He has worked as a Professor of Accounting at the Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, Malaysia. He has also been chairman of the Center for Excellence in Business Performance for three years. He was a Professor of Accounting at the University of Bahrain , Kingdom of Bahrain. Prior to that, he worked as an Associate and Assistant Professor at National Institute of Industrial Engineering , Mumbai , Visiting Associate Professor at Bilkent University . He was a Senior ...
Go to Profile#5073
Andrea Polle
#123440
Overall Influence
#5074
Henrik Larsson
#123463
Overall Influence
#5075
Walter Willinger
#123480
Overall Influence
#5076
Ola
#123486
Overall Influence
#5077
Divesh Srivastava
#123496
Overall Influence
#5078
Marco E. Bianchi
#123507
Overall Influence
#5079
Masoud Soleimani
#123516
Overall Influence
#5080
Gotthard Seifert
#123543
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#5081
Ken Lum
#14457
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Kenneth Robert Lum, OC DFA is a dual citizen Canadian and American academic, painter, photographer, sculptor, and writer. Working in a number of media including painting, sculpture and photography, his art ranges from conceptual in orientation to representational in character and is generally concerned with issues of identity in relation to the categories of language, portraiture and spatial politics.
Go to Profile#5082
Yoland Smith
#123581
Overall Influence
#5083
Bernard Ghanem
#123586
Overall Influence
#5084
Anand Swaroop
#123596
Overall Influence
#5085
Henrik Clausen
#123608
Overall Influence
#5086
Dean F. Sittig
#97359
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Dean Forrest Sittig is an American biomedical informatician specializing in clinical informatics. He is a professor in Biomedical Informatics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Executive Director of the Clinical Informatics Research Collaborative . Sittig was elected as a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics in 1992, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in 2011, and was a founding member of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics in 2017. Since 2004, he has worked with Joan S. Ash, a professor at Oregon Health & Science University to interview several Pioneers in Medical Informatics, including G.
Go to Profile#5087
Kristina Höök
#94075
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 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#5088
Jörg Henkel
#123637
Overall Influence
#5089
Bruno Vellas
#123651
Overall Influence
#5090
Michael Aaron Rockland
#22973
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Michael Aaron Rockland is a writer and Professor of American Studies at Rutgers University. Despite the variety of his books and articles, the recurring interests in his writing—whether scholarship, memoir, journalism or fiction—are New Jersey culture and America on the international stage.
Go to Profile#5091
Stella Atkins
#89080
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 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#5092
Robert F. Storey
#123685
Overall Influence
#5093
Kai Salomaa
#92636
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Kai T. Salomaa is a Finnish Canadian theoretical computer scientist, known for his numerous contributions to the state complexity of finite automata. His highly cited 1994 joint paper with Yu and Zhuang laid the foundations of the area. He has published over 100 papers in scientific journals on various subjects in formal language theory. Salomaa is a full professor at Queen's University .
Go to Profile#5094
Makoto Ogawa
#123695
Overall Influence
#5095
Nicholas Smirnoff
#123715
Overall Influence
#5096
Renato Delascio Lopes
#123723
Overall Influence
#5097
Joseph Zachary
#104423
Overall Influence
Joseph "Joe" Lawrence Zachary is an American computer scientist and professor at the University of Utah. He is known for his work in computer science education as a charter member of the United States Department of Energy Undergraduate Computational Engineering and Science Project, an education initiative to improve the undergraduate science and engineering curriculum through computation. He was influential in promoting a new approach to teaching scientific programming to beginning science and engineering students.
Go to Profile#5098
Martin Sharp
#10164
Overall Influence
1942 - 2013 (71 years)
Martin Ritchie Sharp was an Australian artist, cartoonist, songwriter and film-maker. Career Sharp was born in Bellevue Hill, New South Wales in 1942, and educated at Cranbrook private school, where one of his teachers was the artist Justin O'Brien.
Go to Profile#5099
Kizashi Yamaguchi
#123783
Overall Influence
#5100
Peter Mark Bartold
#123812
Overall Influence
