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,
#5951
Jian-bing Shen
#133039
Overall Influence
#5952
Bastian Leibe
#133041
Overall Influence
#5953
Manfred Wuhrer
#133044
Overall Influence
#5954
Khurshid Ayub
#133052
Overall Influence
#5955
Michael Spafford
#86421
Overall Influence
1935 - 2022 (87 years)
Michael Charles Spafford was an American artist known for his archetypal, figurative oil paintings drawn from Classical mythology. Spafford taught painting at the University of Washington, Seattle until his retirement in 1994.
Go to Profile#5956
Leslie Weston
#33051
Overall Influence
Leslie A. Weston FAA, is a plant biologist, who was awarded a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2023, for her work on weed suppressing ground covers and pest management. She is a professor at Charles Sturt University, at Wagga Wagga, and researches botany, agronomy, weed control and horticulture.
Go to Profile#5957
Hiroyuki Tsuchiya
#133101
Overall Influence
#5958
Robert F. Cook
#133104
Overall Influence
#5959
Boris Hinz
#133107
Overall Influence
#5960
Daniel Grenier
#133116
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
#5961
Bernd Jilma
#133127
Overall Influence
#5962
Luiz Henrique Capparelli Mattoso
#133130
Overall Influence
#5963
Andrés Alastuey
#133132
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
#5964
Mihai P. Datcu
#133163
Overall Influence
#5965
Antony Basten
#133185
Overall Influence
#5966
Randal D. Koster
#133190
Overall Influence
#5967
Natasha Kyprianou
#133200
Overall Influence
#5968
Howard Schulman
#133208
Overall Influence
#5969
Carl − Fredrik Westin
#133225
Overall Influence
#5970
Sandro Sorbi
#133238
Overall Influence
#5971
Junichiro Kono
#93865
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Junichiro Kono is a professor in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, and Materials Science and NanoEngineering, at Rice University. Early life Junichiro Kono received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in applied physics from the University of Tokyo in 1990 and 1992, respectively, and completed his Ph.D. in physics from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1995. He was a postdoctoral research associate in condensed matter physics at the University of California Santa Barbara from 1995-1997, and the W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory Fellow in the Department of Physics at Stanford University from 1997-2000.
Go to Profile#5972
Hossam S. Hassanein
#133264
Overall Influence
#5973
Florent Soubrier
#133284
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
#5974
Britta Weigelt
#133286
Overall Influence
#5975
Yasuhiro Kodera
#133290
Overall Influence
#5976
Abdessattar Abdelkefi
#133299
Overall Influence
#5977
Piero Marchetti
#133304
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
#5978
Bidyut Baran Chaudhuri
#133324
Overall Influence
#5979
Bede Liu
#133329
Overall Influence
#5980
Steven Goldman
#82845
Overall Influence
Steven A. Goldman is an American physician-scientist. His research focuses on the use of stem and progenitor cells for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington's Disease, as well as for the treatment of glial diseases such as the pediatric leukodystrophies and multiple sclerosis.
Go to Profile#5981
Peter Fox
#54792
Overall Influence
1959 - 2021 (62 years)
Peter Arthur Fox was a data science and Semantic eScience researcher at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , United States. He was a Tetherless World Constellation chair and professor of Earth and Environmental Science, Computer Science and Cognitive Science, and director of the Information Technology and Web Science Program at RPI. He was known for defining informatics and data science in earth sciences, bringing Semantic Web research to that community, as well as defining the sun-earth connection research agenda and co-convening the community. Fox was born in Devonport, Tasmania, Australia a...
Go to Profile#5982
Viktor Brabec
#133345
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
#5983
John S. Adams
#133363
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#5984
Mikko Valkama
#133365
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#5985
Stefan Schmid
#133374
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
#5986
Wouter Joosen
#133384
Overall Influence
#5987
Franco Zambonelli
#133391
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
#5988
Matthew Frosch
#133405
Overall Influence
#5989
Jordi Sardans
#133407
Overall Influence
#5990
Olivier Bodenreider
#133410
Overall Influence
#5991
Tim M. Blackwell
#133440
Overall Influence
#5992
Andrew Forge
#62896
Overall Influence
1923 - 2002 (79 years)
Andrew Murray Forge was an English painter, academic, and art critic. After Leighton Park School, Forge studied art at the Camberwell School of Art in London, England, under William Coldstream and Victor Pasmore in the 1940s. From 1950 to 1964, Forge was a senior lecturer at the Slade School of Art in central London, where he met Dorothy Mead in the 1950s, a former member of the Borough Group, when she was a mature student at the Slade. He showed with the London Group of artists from as early as 1950. He formally joined the London Group in 1960, the same year as Mead, and was president from 1966 to 1971.
Go to Profile#5993
Reiji Kannagi
#133455
Overall Influence
#5994
Kate Devlin
#108653
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kate Devlin, born Adela Katharine Devlin is a Northern Irish computer scientist specialising in Artificial intelligence and Human–computer interaction . She is best known for her work on human sexuality and robotics and was co-chair of the annual Love and Sex With Robots convention in 2016 held in London and was founder of the UK's first ever sex tech hackathon held in 2016 at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London and is the author of Turned On: Science, Sex and Robo...
Go to Profile#5995
Harold Charles Daume
#133457
Overall Influence
#5996
Yuri Nikiforov
#132581
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Dr. Yuri Nikiforov is an American scientist who revolutionized the understanding of thyroid cancer, most recently winning a two-year battle in which the World Health Organization has agreed in 2017 to reclassify non-invasive thyroid tumors to non-cancerogenic liaisons. Those tumors typically have some, but not all, characteristics of cancer. The WHO has agreed to change the term for the tumors from Encapsulated Follicular Variant of Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma to Noninvasive Follicular Thyroid Neoplasm With Papillary-like Nuclear Features, or NIFTP. About 45,000 people a year are diagnosed with NIFTP in the world.
Go to Profile#5997
Sigurd Lenzen
#133471
Overall Influence
#5998
Michael Sendtner
#133484
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#5999
Graham Cormode
#133485
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
#6000
Fumio Hanaoka
#133493
Overall Influence
