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,
#5551
Patrick J. Miller
#73320
Overall Influence
Patrick J. Miller is a computer scientist and high performance parallel applications developer with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of California, Davis, in run-time error detection and correction. Until recently he was with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Go to Profile#5552
Yasuyuki Kita
#128740
Overall Influence
#5553
Stefan H. Heinemann
#128755
Overall Influence
#5554
David Kember
#128762
Overall Influence
#5555
Hans-Joachim Bungartz
#114822
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Hans-Joachim Bungartz is a German mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor at the Technical University of Munich and holds the chair for scientific computing there. He was Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science and has been Dean of the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology since October 2022.
Go to Profile#5556
Francisco B. Ortega
#128804
Overall Influence
#5557
Asif Mahmood
#128825
Overall Influence
#5558
Mohammad Reza Saeb
#128848
Overall Influence
#5559
Seymour Cray
#88193
Overall Influence
1925 - 1996 (71 years)
Seymour Roger Cray was an American electrical engineer and supercomputer architect who designed a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades, and founded Cray Research which built many of these machines. Called "the father of supercomputing", Cray has been credited with creating the supercomputer industry. Joel S. Birnbaum, then chief technology officer of Hewlett-Packard, said of him: "It seems impossible to exaggerate the effect he had on the industry; many of the things that high performance computers now do routinely were at the farthest edge of credibility when Se...
Go to Profile#5560
Debu Tripathy
#128859
Overall Influence
#5561
Enzo Bonora
#128861
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
#5562
Elisabeth Oswald
#95844
Overall Influence
Maria Elisabeth Oswald is an Austrian cryptographer known for her work on side-channel attacks including power analysis and on implementations of cryptosystems that are resistant to these attacks. She is a professor at the University of Klagenfurt.
Go to Profile#5563
Thor Ueland
#128871
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
#5564
Deng’an Cai
#128901
Overall Influence
#5565
Vincent Larivière
#128918
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
#5566
Atul Kumar Sharma
#128921
Overall Influence
#5567
George Triadafilopoulos
#128936
Overall Influence
#5568
Tom Wu
#128941
Overall Influence
#5569
Yvo G. Desmedt
#128947
Overall Influence
#5570
Ellen Riloff
#117063
Overall Influence
Ellen Riloff is an American computer scientist currently serving as a professor at the School of Computing at the University of Utah. Her research focuses on Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics, specifically information extraction, sentiment analysis, semantic class induction, and bootstrapping methods that learn from unannotated texts.
Go to Profile#5571
Michael W. M. Mahoney
#128965
Overall Influence
#5572
Zhongheng Zhang
#128971
Overall Influence
#5573
Esther Arkin
#65575
Overall Influence
Esther M. Arkin is an Israeli–American mathematician and computer scientist whose research interests include operations research, computational geometry, combinatorial optimization, and the design and analysis of algorithms. She is a professor of applied mathematics and statistics at Stony Brook University. At Stony Brook, she also directs the undergraduate program in applied mathematics and statistics, and is an affiliated faculty member with the department of computer science.
Go to Profile#5574
Stephan Grzesiek
#128979
Overall Influence
#5575
Marilyn Walker
#106569
Overall Influence
Marilyn A. Walker is an American computer scientist. She is professor of computer science and head of the Natural Language and Dialogue Systems Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz . Her research includes work on computational models of dialogue interaction and conversational agents, analysis of affect, sarcasm and other social phenomena in social media dialogue, acquiring causal knowledge from text, conversational summarization, interactive story and narrative generation, and statistical methods for training the dialogue manager and the language generation engine for dialogue syst...
Go to Profile#5576
Masahiko Negishi
#128995
Overall Influence
#5577
Mauricio Montal
#129000
Overall Influence
#5578
Steven A. Abrams
#129011
Overall Influence
#5579
Yanju Liu
#129013
Overall Influence
#5580
Anthony Dent
#37012
Overall Influence
Anthony Dent is an American songwriter and producer, best known for co-writing global hit "Survivor" for Destiny's Child, as well as "Friend of Mine" for Kelly Price. Originally a member of Bad Boy Records' famed production outfit The Hitmen, Dent left to create his own production company, State Of Mind Muzic Inc., where he began mentoring and signing new artists, including singer-songwriter Keri Hilson.
Go to Profile#5581
Ellen Gethner
#71126
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Ellen Gethner is a US mathematician and computer scientist specializing in graph theory who won the Mathematical Association of America's Chauvenet Prize in 2002 with co-authors Stan Wagon and Brian Wick for their paper A stroll through the Gaussian Primes.
Go to Profile#5582
Uri Galili
#129033
Overall Influence
#5583
Hany Farid
#129044
Overall Influence
#5584
Joseph Keshet
#113709
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Joseph Keshet is an Israeli professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty of the Technion. Early life and education Keshet was born in Tel-Aviv. He graduated from the Amal School and began his academic studies at the Department of Electrical Engineering-Systems at Tel-Aviv University in 1991 and received his B.Sc. in 1994. Keshet served in the IDF Unit 8200 from 1995 to 2002 as the head of the speech processing research section in the R&D Center. During his service, he received a national award from the Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure .
Go to Profile#5585
Ilona J. Frieden
#129050
Overall Influence
#5586
Tiruvoor G. Nagaraja
#129052
Overall Influence
#5587
Henning Urlaub
#129068
Overall Influence
#5588
Joachim M. Buhmann
#129079
Overall Influence
#5589
Fazal Ahmad Khalid
#57050
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Fazal Ahmad Khalid is a seasoned academician and administrator. Presently, he serves as the Rector of Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Topi. Prof Dr. Fazal Ahmad Khalid, SI, has extensive experience as a university administrator and has served in various positions at the national level. He has previously served as the Chairman of the Punjab Higher Education Commission, Vice Chancellor of the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Acting VC of Punjab Tianjin University of Technology , Vice Chairman of the Pakistan Engineering Council, and head of PEC Accreditation Board and Curriculum Committee.
Go to Profile#5590
Mark Donowitz
#129103
Overall Influence
#5591
Christian Blum
#129107
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
#5592
Elette Boyle
#77453
Overall Influence
Elette Boyle is an American and Israeli computer scientist and cryptographer, known for her research on secret sharing, digital signatures, and obfuscation. She is a professor of computer science at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, where she directs the Center for Foundations and Applications of Cryptographic Theory.
Go to Profile#5593
Ushio Kikkawa
#129118
Overall Influence
#5594
Igor Jurisica
#112530
Overall Influence
Igor Jurisica is a Professor in the departments of Computer Science and Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. He is a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Integrative Cancer Informatics, and an associate editor for BMC Bioinformatics, Proteomes, Cancer Informatics, International Journal of Knowledge Discovery in Bioinformatics, and Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences. In 2014, 2015 and 2016, he is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher.
Go to Profile#5595
Michael Croft
#129125
Overall Influence
#5596
Francesco Negro
#129126
Overall Influence
#5597
Kai-Fu Lee
#100490
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Kai-Fu Lee is a Taiwanese businessman, computer scientist, investor, and writer. He is currently based in Beijing, China. Lee developed a speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition system as his Ph.D. thesis at Carnegie Mellon University. He later worked as an executive, first at Apple, then SGI, Microsoft, and Google.
Go to Profile#5598
John H Healey
#129147
Overall Influence
#5599
Rui-Hua Xu
#129153
Overall Influence
#5600
Leslie Blackett Wilson
#93932
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (96 years)
Leslie Blackett Wilson was chair of Computing Science at the University of Stirling, appointed on August, 1979. Previously, he was a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the Computing Laboratory of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He joined the Computing Laboratory in 1964. Before that, since 1951, he was a Senior Scientific Officer at the Naval Construction Research Establishment at Dunfermline.
Go to Profile