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,
#7701
Dursun Delen
#148990
Overall Influence
#7702
Yoh Zen
#149000
Overall Influence
#7703
Captain Beefheart
#13957
Overall Influence
1941 - 2010 (69 years)
Don Van Vliet was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. Conducting a rotating ensemble known as the Magic Band, he recorded 13 studio albums between 1967 and 1982. His music blended elements of blues, free jazz, rock, and avant-garde composition with idiosyncratic rhythms, absurdist wordplay, a loud, gravelly voice, and his claimed wide vocal range, though reports of it have varied from three octaves to seven and a half. Known for his enigmatic persona, Beefheart frequently constructed myths about his life and was known to exercise an almost dictatorial control over his supporting musicians.
Go to Profile#7704
Thomas Reinehr
#149007
Overall Influence
#7705
Umar Farooq
#149011
Overall Influence
#7706
Eric Weitz
#149040
Overall Influence
#7707
Hongbin Bei
#149045
Overall Influence
#7708
Paul Sheppard Babyn
#149054
Overall Influence
#7709
Leo Eberl
#149057
Overall Influence
#7710
Hitoshi Niwa
#149062
Overall Influence
#7711
Bernhard Lämmle
#149064
Overall Influence
#7712
Joyce Friedman
#67825
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
Joyce Barbara Friedman was an American mathematician, operations researcher, computer scientist, and computational linguist who worked as a professor at the University of Michigan and Boston University and served as president of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
Go to Profile#7713
Akira Andoh
#149080
Overall Influence
#7714
Kenta Nakai
#149081
Overall Influence
#7715
Klaus Arno Siebenrock
#149093
Overall Influence
#7716
Dominique Richon
#149094
Overall Influence
#7717
Virginia Torczon
#73823
Overall Influence
Virginia Joanne Torczon is an American applied mathematician and computer scientist known for her research on nonlinear optimization methods including pattern search. She is dean of graduate studies and research, and chancellor professor of computer science, at the College of William & Mary.
Go to Profile#7718
Victor Gurewich
#149119
Overall Influence
#7719
Tetsuo Tsutsui
#149132
Overall Influence
#7720
Ali Dehghantanha
#149134
Overall Influence
#7721
Hiroshi Kawaguchi
#149141
Overall Influence
#7722
Pierre A. Moulin
#149162
Overall Influence
#7723
Lei Ge
#149183
Overall Influence
#7724
Boris C. Bastian
#149193
Overall Influence
#7725
Rongrong Ji
#149197
Overall Influence
#7726
Alberto Corsini
#149200
Overall Influence
#7727
Jacques Duchateau
#149206
Overall Influence
#7728
Chitta Baral
#149207
Overall Influence
#7729
Michael Kudlick
#122528
Overall Influence
1934 - 2008 (74 years)
Michael Douglas Kudlick was a computer scientist and professor of computer science, most known for developing the file transfer and mail protocols for ARPANET while working for the Augmentation Research Center at SRI International, and later as a noted professor and academic administrator at the University of San Francisco.
Go to Profile#7730
Jochen Hampe
#149230
Overall Influence
#7731
Giovanni Coppola
#149232
Overall Influence
#7732
Iadh Ounis
#149239
Overall Influence
#7733
Patrick Adlercreutz
#149240
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
#7734
Tsuyoshi Kawai
#149267
Overall Influence
#7735
Yoshikazu Takada
#149268
Overall Influence
#7736
Sandro Sonnino
#149291
Overall Influence
#7737
Marián Brestič
#149307
Overall Influence
#7738
Adhemar Bultheel
#120496
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Adhemar François Bultheel is a Belgian mathematician and computer scientist, the former president of the Belgian Mathematical Society. He is a prolific book reviewer for the Bulletin of the Belgian Mathematical Society and for the European Mathematical Society. His research concerns approximation theory.
Go to Profile#7739
William Wisden
#149324
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
#7740
Nicola Petrosillo
#149326
Overall Influence
#7741
Alison Tomlin
#68561
Overall Influence
Alison Sarah Tomlin is a British physical chemist and applied mathematician whose research involves building detailed mathematical models of combustion, including uncertainty quantification for those models. She is a professor in the School of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Leeds, where she heads the Clean Combustion Research Group.
Go to Profile#7742
Kirk Goldsberry
#38850
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Kirk Goldsberry is a basketball writer. He was the vice president for strategic research for the San Antonio Spurs, the lead analyst for Team USA Basketball, and a visiting researcher at the Harvard Institute of Quantitative Social Sciences. He is best known for his sports writing and for pioneering the hexagonal shot chart in basketball analytics, and for being one of the leaders of the recent advanced metrics movement in basketball.
Go to Profile#7743
Mark David Kilby
#149380
Overall Influence
#7744
Mel Alexenberg
#26831
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Mel Alexenberg is an American-Israeli artist, art educator, and writer recognized for his pioneering work exploring the intersections of art, science, technology and digital culture. He created the first digital computer generated painting in 1965, experimental digital fine art prints in the 1980s that are in 30 museum collections worldwide, circumglobal cyberangel flights honoring Rembrandt in 1989 and in 2019, and a dialogue between tactile artworks and NFTs.
Go to Profile#7745
Paola Gramatica
#149400
Overall Influence
#7746
Rosario Azcón
#149426
Overall Influence
#7747
Xin Wei Wang
#149428
Overall Influence
#7748
Masahiko Abe
#149449
Overall Influence
#7749
Antonio Di Sabatino
#149451
Overall Influence
#7750
Wolfgang Kleemann
#149460
Overall Influence
