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,
#5651
Guido Costamagna
#129748
Overall Influence
#5652
Alexander Wong
#129758
Overall Influence
#5653
Konrad Schindler
#129780
Overall Influence
#5654
Kjersti Engan
#37962
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Kjersti Engan is a Norwegian researcher in signal and image processing who works as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Stavanger. Engan was born in 1971 in Bergen. She earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1994 from Bergen University College. She then moved to the University of Stavanger for graduate study, completing her doctorate in 2000. At Stavanger, she was promoted to full professor in 2008.
Go to Profile#5655
Noah Daniel Goodman
#129802
Overall Influence
#5656
Yasushi Miyashita
#129900
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#5657
Zhengyu Liu
#129901
Overall Influence
#5658
Jan Wouters
#129902
Overall Influence
#5659
Nikolaus Hansen
#129935
Overall Influence
#5660
Charles Geschke
#97465
Overall Influence
1939 - 2021 (82 years)
Charles Matthew "Chuck" Geschke was an American businessman and computer scientist best known for founding the graphics and publishing software company Adobe Inc. with John Warnock in 1982, with whom he also co-created the PDF document format.
Go to Profile#5661
Nando De Freitas
#129944
Overall Influence
#5662
Edoardo Mannucci
#129959
Overall Influence
#5663
Angelo Vacca
#129970
Overall Influence
#5664
Raffaele Ferri
#129972
Overall Influence
#5665
Hitoshi Tsuda
#130005
Overall Influence
#5666
Mihai Pop
#130007
Overall Influence
#5667
Brijesh Kumar Tiwari
#130014
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
#5668
Chikao Morimoto
#130017
Overall Influence
#5669
John McCracken
#20744
Overall Influence
1934 - 2011 (77 years)
John Harvey McCracken was a minimalist artist. He lived and worked in Los Angeles, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and New York. Education/teaching After graduating from high school, McCracken served in the United States Navy for four years before enrolling in the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, earning a B.F.A. in 1962 and completing most of the work for an M.F.A. During these years he studied with Gordon Onslow Ford and Tony DeLap.
Go to Profile#5670
Barry Leiba
#119838
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Barry Leiba is a computer scientist and software researcher. He retired from IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, New York in February 2009, and now works for FutureWei Technologies as a Director of Internet Standards. His work has focused for many years on electronic mail and anti-spam technology, on mobile computing and the Internet of things, and on Internet standards.
Go to Profile#5671
Dan Clancy
#114957
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Daniel Joseph Clancy is an American technologist and computer scientist. After working at NASA, he was the engineering director for Google Book Search from 2005 to early 2014. From 2014 to 2018, Clancy was Vice President of product and engineering at social networking service Nextdoor.
Go to Profile#5672
Marco Sandri
#130034
Overall Influence
#5673
Rob Horne
#52380
Overall Influence
Rob Horne is Professor of Behavioural Medicine at the School of Pharmacy, University College London . In September 2006, he founded the Centre for Behavioural Medicine at UCL, which he continues to lead. Horne was designated a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine in 2013 and is a founding fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. He was appointed as a National Institute for Health Research Senior Investigator in 2011. He is an internationally recognised expert in self-management of chronic illness and adherence to medications.
Go to Profile#5674
Masayuki Inaba
#130054
Overall Influence
#5675
Min-yi Guo
#130110
Overall Influence
#5676
David Allen Mcallester
#130112
Overall Influence
#5677
Jeffrey Penfold
#130116
Overall Influence
#5678
Osamu Ito
#130121
Overall Influence
#5679
Edzer J. Pebesma
#130130
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
#5680
Tianrui Li
#130144
Overall Influence
#5681
Peter Bacchetti
#130149
Overall Influence
#5682
Andrew P. Roberts
#130180
Overall Influence
#5683
Eric Goles
#23070
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Eric Antonio Goles Chacc is a Chilean mathematician and computer scientist of Croatian descent. He studied civil engineering at the University of Chile before taking two doctorates at the University of Grenoble in France. A professor at the University of Chile, he is known for his work on cellular automata.
Go to Profile#5684
Andrew Clive Simpson
#96572
Overall Influence
Andrew Clive Simpson is a British Computer Scientist. He is Director of Studies, Software Engineering Programme at University of Oxford. He is Governing Body Fellow of Kellogg College. Biography He obtained first class BSc in Computer Science from University of Wales, Swansea ; followed by MSc in Computation and DPhil in Computation from University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#5685
Jimeng Sun
#130186
Overall Influence
#5686
Dave Singh
#130200
Overall Influence
#5687
Réjean Plamondon
#130212
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#5688
Bamshad Mobasher
#130217
Overall Influence
#5689
Chris Stevenson
#37268
Overall Influence
1901 - 2014 (113 years)
Chris Stevenson was an author and professor of mental health nursing at Dublin City University, where she was also head of the School of Nursing. She was appointed in 2005, having begun her career as a psychiatric nurse.
Go to Profile#5690
Michael Q Zhang
#130235
Overall Influence
#5691
Nicholas Franks
#87000
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Nicholas Peter Franks FRS FRSB has been Professor of Biophysics and Anaesthetics at Imperial College London since 1993. His research focuses on how general anaesthetics act at the cell and molecular levels as well as with neuronal networks. Franks holds patents on use of xenon gas as a neuroprotectant and has published research on the use of the anesthetic properties of xenon.
Go to Profile#5692
Ayellet Tal
#109255
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Ayellet Tal is an Israeli researcher in computational geometry and computer graphics who holds the Alfred and Marion Bar Chair in Engineering at the Technion. Research Tal's research interests include computational geometry, computer graphics, geometric modeling, and geometry processing. She has also studied the applications of computer vision to archaeology.
Go to Profile#5693
Joel B. Snyder
#66446
Overall Influence
Joel B. Snyder served as the 2001 IEEE President. He was also a member of the board of directors of IEEE. Snyder received his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He has also taught at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, N.Y.; the New York Institute of Technology; and Long Island University.
Go to Profile#5694
Harlan D. Mills
#130257
Overall Influence
#5695
Uri Elkayam
#130265
Overall Influence
#5696
Claus Belka
#130276
Overall Influence
#5697
Gwanggil Jeon
#130291
Overall Influence
#5698
John Niland
#29774
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
John Rodney Niland is an Australian academic and board director. Niland obtained a Bachelor and Master of Commerce from UNSW and his PhD is from the University of Illinois. He has held academic positions at Cornell University, The Australian National University, and UNSW. He served as a mediator of labour disputes in the US while at Cornell, and in Australia has undertaken extensive academic and policy work in conflict resolution, theory and practice, particularly enterprise bargaining. John Niland is a Professor Emeritus of UNSW and was its fourth Vice Chancellor and President . Before that he was the Dean of the Faculty of Commerce and Economics.
Go to Profile#5699
Alain Sauvanet
#130307
Overall Influence
#5700
Paola Flocchini
#129244
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Paola Flocchini is a Canadian computer scientist known for her research in distributed computing, pattern formation, self-organizing systems, swarm behavior, and cellular automata. She is University Research Chair on Intruder Agents and the Decontamination of Communication Networks at the University of Ottawa.
Go to Profile