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,
#5801
Polina Golland
#112649
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Polina Golland is an Israeli-American computer scientist specializing in medical image computing and biomedical image analysis. She is Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and heads the medical vision group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Go to Profile#5802
Hannu Tenhunen
#131419
Overall Influence
#5803
Raymie Stata
#87090
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Raymond Paul "Raymie" Stata is an American computer engineer and business executive. Early life Stata received his bachelor's and master's degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT, where he also earned his Ph.D. in 1996, under adviser John Guttag.
Go to Profile#5804
Luigi Stella
#131437
Overall Influence
#5805
Thomas Walle
#131439
Overall Influence
#5806
Chongqing Kang
#131448
Overall Influence
#5807
Nobutaka Fujii
#131455
Overall Influence
#5808
Joseph Cavallaro
#121269
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joseph R. Cavallaro is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University and director of the Center for Multimedia Communication in Houston, Texas. He joined the faculty of Rice University in August 1988. He was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for contributions to VLSI architectures and algorithms for signal processing and wireless communications.
Go to Profile#5809
Keikhosro Karimi
#131495
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (50 years)
#5810
Christian Beck
#131501
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
#5811
Andrew Simmons
#131512
Overall Influence
#5812
Konrad Seppelt
#131515
Overall Influence
#5813
Patrick Prosser
#65558
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Patrick Prosser is a Computer Scientist who spent the bulk of his career at the University of Glasgow. His research has centred on constraint programming, although it has extended into the application of those techniques into other areas. For his major contributions to the theory and practice of constraint programming, Patrick was awarded the Association for Constraint Programming's Research Excellence Award on 15 September 2011: he is only the sixth recipient of this award. He gave a prerecorded acceptance speech, which is available on YouTube.
Go to Profile#5814
Sameer Kumar
#131521
Overall Influence
#5815
Yvo G. Desmedt
#108210
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Dr. Yvo G. Desmedt is the Jonsson Distinguished Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, and in addition Chair of Information Communication Technology at University College London. He was a pioneer of threshold cryptography and is an International Association for Cryptologic Research Fellow. He also made crucial observations that were used in the cryptanalysis of the Merkle–Hellman knapsack cryptosystem and observed properties of the Data Encryption Standard which were used by Eli Biham and Adi Shamir when they invented Differential Cryptanalysis.
Go to Profile#5816
Fahad Shahbaz Khan
#131545
Overall Influence
#5817
Federico Bozzetti
#131587
Overall Influence
#5818
Howard Hu
#118126
Overall Influence
Howard Hu is an American physician-scientist, internist, and specialist in preventive medicine and environmental health. He is currently the Flora L. Thornton Chair and Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. He previously taught at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, University of Michigan School of Public Health, and University of Toronto, where he served as founding dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Hu has served on the Board of Directors for Physicians for Human Rights, where he was...
Go to Profile#5819
Mike Mitchell
#46783
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Mike Mitchell is an American film director, writer, producer, actor and animator. He directed the films Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Surviving Christmas, Sky High, Shrek Forever After, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water , Trolls and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.
Go to Profile#5820
John Connell
#43312
Overall Influence
1940 - 2009 (69 years)
John Connell was an American artist. His works included sculpture, painting, drawing, and writing. Life and work Connell was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended Brown University, in Providence, RI , the Art Students League, NY and New York University where he studied Chinese print making. His first show was in New York in 1962.
Go to Profile#5821
Shanika Karunasekera
#97184
Overall Influence
Shanika Karunasekera is a Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. Dr. Karunasekera completed her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cambridge, UK in 1995. Earlier she completed her B.Sc. in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.
Go to Profile#5822
Markku Peltonen
#131654
Overall Influence
#5823
Yang Kuang
#131667
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#5824
Sakari Knuutila
#131669
Overall Influence
#5825
Lee Smith
#131676
Overall Influence
#5826
Yoshihiro Ogawa
#131677
Overall Influence
#5827
Martin Schumacher
#131735
Overall Influence
#5828
Davide Moscatelli
#131741
Overall Influence
#5829
Gary Kildall
#106460
Overall Influence
1942 - 1994 (52 years)
Gary Arlen Kildall was an American computer scientist and microcomputer entrepreneur. During the 1970s, Kildall created the CP/M operating system among other operating systems and programming tools, and subsequently founded Digital Research, Inc. to market and sell his software products. Kildall was among the earliest individuals to recognize microprocessors as fully capable computers , and to organize a company around this concept. Due to his accomplishments during this era, Kildall is considered a pioneer of the personal computer revolution.
Go to Profile#5830
Andrzej Głowacki
#92881
Overall Influence
Andrzej Głowacki is a Polish, European philosopher, designer, graphic artist, professor of Academy Of Fine Art in Cracow , head of Chair of Commercial Art, Computer Graphics and New Media in University of Information, Technology and Management in Rzeszów, Poland, and a co-author of the nascent Center of Digital Arts and Techniques also in UITM, Rzeszów.
Go to Profile#5831
Josef Parnas
#105515
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Josef Parnas is a Danish psychiatrist. He is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Copenhagen, as well as a co-founder and senior researcher at the Center for Subjectivity Research. He worked on the creation of the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience scale, which has played an important role in enabling empirical study of self-disorders in schizophrenia spectrum disorders.
Go to Profile#5832
Eric Raymond
#131805
Overall Influence
#5833
Yohei Doi
#131806
Overall Influence
#5834
Amalia Gastaldelli
#131810
Overall Influence
#5835
Robert Irwin
#11824
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Robert Walter Irwin was an American installation artist who explored perception and the conditional in art, often through site-specific, architectural interventions that alter the physical, sensory and temporal experience of space.
Go to Profile#5836
Geyong Min
#131832
Overall Influence
#5837
Guy Van Camp
#131854
Overall Influence
#5838
De-yu Meng
#131855
Overall Influence
#5839
Alexander Aiken
#131872
Overall Influence
#5840
David G. Birch
#131879
Overall Influence
#5841
Petra Marschner
#131884
Overall Influence
#5842
Elsayed Z. Soliman
#131887
Overall Influence
#5843
István Mayer
#131911
Overall Influence
#5844
Hajo Alexander Reijers
#131929
Overall Influence
#5845
Sylvie Thiébaux
#78507
Overall Influence
Sylvie Thiébaux is a French-Australian computer scientist, whose research in artificial intelligence focuses on automated planning and scheduling, diagnosis, and automated reasoning under uncertainty. She is a professor of computer science at the Australian National University, and co-editor-in-chief of the journal Artificial Intelligence.
Go to Profile#5846
Anne L. Peters
#43543
Overall Influence
Anne Peters is a endocrinologist, diabetes expert, and professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She runs diabetes centers in well-served Beverly Hills and under-resourced East Los Angeles. She teaches physicians and people with diabetes around the world how to better treat the condition, through lifestyle, medications and technology.
Go to Profile#5847
David Paul Taggart
#131949
Overall Influence
#5848
Robert J Schwartz
#131979
Overall Influence
#5849
Ping Ning
#131982
Overall Influence
#5850
Claudia Bolognesi
#131985
Overall Influence
