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,
#6901
Adriana Zeevi
#142237
Overall Influence
#6902
Min-shiang Hwang
#142243
Overall Influence
#6903
Terry Frost
#20010
Overall Influence
1915 - 2003 (88 years)
Sir Terence Ernest Manitou Frost RA was a British abstract artist, who worked in Newlyn, Cornwall. Frost was renowned for his use of the Cornish light, colour and shape to start a new art movement in England. He became a leading exponent of abstract art and a recognised figure of the British art establishment.
Go to Profile#6904
Jaroslaw Roman Rossignac
#142254
Overall Influence
#6905
Marcel Kool
#142257
Overall Influence
#6906
Shun Shimohama
#142268
Overall Influence
#6907
Peter A. Bruck
#54518
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Peter A. Bruck is former CEO and Chief Researcher of the Research Studios Austria Forschungsgesellschaft mbH and founder of the spin-off KnowledgeFox. Bruck is also honorary President of the ICNM-International Center for New Media, Salzburg, which selects and promotes best practice in ICT applications and multimedia content nationally in Austria, at the European level and globally under auspices of the United Nations. Chairman of the Board the European Academy of Digital Media-EADiM, Netherlands, Chairman of the Board of Directors the World Summit Award within the framework of the United Nat...
Go to Profile#6908
Luke Clark
#142312
Overall Influence
#6909
Alon Harris
#43747
Overall Influence
Alon Harris is an American clinical scientist, professor of ophthalmology and Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health, educator, inventor and researcher in the field of ocular blood flow and its relationship to diseases of the eye. Harris served as the principal or co-principal investigator on more than 60 research grants, published more than 392 peer-reviewed articles, and wrote 23 books and 70 book chapters. As of 2021, he holds two patents. Harris sits on the Board of Directors and the Scientific Advisory Board of The Glaucoma Foundation and is the Vice Chair of International...
Go to Profile#6910
Toshihisa Komori
#142323
Overall Influence
#6911
Brian Sewell
#7271
Overall Influence
1931 - 2015 (84 years)
Brian Alfred Christopher Bushell Sewell was an English art critic. He wrote for the Evening Standard and had an acerbic view of conceptual art and the Turner Prize. The Guardian described him as "Britain's most famous and controversial art critic", while the Standard called him the "nation’s best art critic".
Go to Profile#6912
Hirohisa Saito
#142352
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#6913
Bolei Zhou
#142358
Overall Influence
#6914
Tosiyasu L. Kunii
#142363
Overall Influence
#6915
Antoine Van Proeyen
#142365
Overall Influence
#6916
Bernard Faye
#142367
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#6917
Junbai Li
#142369
Overall Influence
#6918
Muammer Koç
#142377
Overall Influence
#6919
David Lee Butler
#142387
Overall Influence
#6920
Shusei Sato
#142395
Overall Influence
#6921
Marco Baroni
#142402
Overall Influence
#6922
Michel Marre
#142413
Overall Influence
#6923
Simone Ferrero
#142424
Overall Influence
#6924
Alberto Burri
#11525
Overall Influence
1915 - 1995 (80 years)
Alberto Burri was an Italian visual artist, painter, sculptor, and physician based in Città di Castello. He is associated with the matterism of the European informal art movement and described his style as a polymaterialist. He had connections with Lucio Fontana's spatialism and, with Antoni Tàpies, an influence on the revival of the art of post-war assembly in America as in Europe.
Go to Profile#6925
Vincenzo Valentini
#142428
Overall Influence
#6926
Mary Ganguli
#142440
Overall Influence
#6927
Mou Chen
#142442
Overall Influence
#6928
Charles H. F. Peden
#142443
Overall Influence
#6929
Johji Inazawa
#142463
Overall Influence
#6930
Jonathan Lloyd
#142464
Overall Influence
#6931
Soumya Raychaudhuri
#115033
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Soumya Raychaudhuri is a Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, and an Institute Member at Broad Institute. He is the JS Coblyn and MB Brenner Distinguished Chair in Rheumatology/Immunology and a practicing rheumatologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is the Director for the Center for Data Sciences at Brigham and Harvard. In addition, he serves as a Visiting Professor in Genetics at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on human genetics and computational genomics to understand immune-mediated diseases.
Go to Profile#6932
James Mickens
#128322
Overall Influence
James W. Mickens is an American computer scientist and the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. His research focuses on distributed systems, such as large-scale services and ways to make them more secure. He is critical of machine learning as a boilerplate solution to most outstanding computational problems.
Go to Profile#6933
Alessandra Rinaldo
#142466
Overall Influence
#6934
Paul Johnson
#142469
Overall Influence
#6935
Norman R. Hertzer
#142479
Overall Influence
#6936
Riki Kobayashi
#142493
Overall Influence
#6937
Mark Hargreaves
#142497
Overall Influence
#6938
Sylvie Boldo
#73769
Overall Influence
Sylvie Boldo is a French mathematician and computer scientist. Her research combines automated theorem proving and computer arithmetic, focusing on the formal verification of floating-point arithmetic operations and of algorithms based on them. She is a director of research for the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation , affiliated with the Formal Methods Laboratory at Paris-Saclay University and the INRIA Saclay-Île-de-France Research Centre, where she co-leads the Toccata project for formally verified programs, certified tools and numerical computations. She is als...
Go to Profile#6939
Pawan Kumar Agrawal
#142499
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#6940
Prasanta Kumar Das
#142500
Overall Influence
#6941
Brewster Kahle
#106514
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Brewster Lurton Kahle is an American digital librarian, a computer engineer, Internet entrepreneur, and advocate of universal access to all knowledge. In 1996, Kahle founded the Internet Archive and co-founded Alexa Internet. In 2012, he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#6942
Hiroshi Yasuda
#142503
Overall Influence
#6943
Mitsuru Ishizuka
#142509
Overall Influence
#6944
Takashi Ooi
#142520
Overall Influence
#6945
Biao Chen
#93581
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Biao Chen is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Syracuse University. He was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for "contributions to decentralized signal processing in sensor networks and interference management of wireless networks".
Go to Profile#6946
Manuela Simoni
#142553
Overall Influence
#6947
Richard Ferrero
#34429
Overall Influence
Richard Ferrero is a microbiologist. He is a senior research fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council . In the Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases at the Hudson Institute, he also holds the position of senior scientist and head of the Gastrointestinal Infection and Inflammation Research Group.
Go to Profile#6948
Fabio Ghezzi
#142589
Overall Influence
#6949
Luigi Fedele
#142596
Overall Influence
#6950
Alexis Smith
#34394
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Alexis Smith is an American artist. She has worked in collage and installation. Biography Smith's father was a psychiatrist and she spent her childhood years living first on a citrus grove in Covina, California and then on the grounds of a mental hospital. "It was just off enough to be affecting," she later stated, "it had that edge of nonreality, of literal craziness".
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