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,
#8101
Brian K. Smith
#68360
Overall Influence
Brian K. Smith is The Honorable David S. Nelson Professorial Chair and Associate Dean for Research at Boston College's School of Education and Human Development. Previously, he had been a dean at Drexel University and at Rhode Island School of Design. He also had appointments at MIT and Penn State, and has held rotation appointments at the National Science Foundation.
Go to Profile#8102
Yingying Chen
#152007
Overall Influence
Yingying Chen is a computer scientist whose research involves mobile computing, the internet of things, the security implications of mobile sensor data, wearable technology, and activity trackers. She is a professor at Rutgers University, where she heads the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and directs the Data Analysis and Information SecuritY Lab.
Go to Profile#8103
Tao Tang
#152287
Overall Influence
#8104
Daniel A. Reed
#93663
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Daniel A. Reed is a computer scientist who is the provost of the University of Utah. He is current Chair of the National Science Board and was previously vice-president for research at the University of Iowa.
Go to Profile#8105
Shaohua Shen
#152293
Overall Influence
#8106
Julio Soria
#152302
Overall Influence
#8107
Ralf Schulz
#152304
Overall Influence
#8108
William E. Friedman
#152311
Overall Influence
#8109
Nicole Immorlica
#73689
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Nicole Immorlica is a theoretical computer scientist at Microsoft Research, known for her work on algorithmic game theory and locality-sensitive hashing. Education and career Immorlica completed her Ph.D. in 2005 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the joint supervision of David Karger and Erik Demaine. Her dissertation was Computing with Strategic Agents.
Go to Profile#8110
Yuanbo Zhang
#152347
Overall Influence
#8111
Bianca Maria Piraccini
#152383
Overall Influence
#8112
Srinivasan Natarajan
#152385
Overall Influence
#8113
Hervé Jégou
#152398
Overall Influence
#8114
Adrian Hilton
#152414
Overall Influence
#8115
Santiago Quirce
#152421
Overall Influence
#8116
Andrew H. Kaye
#152428
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
#8117
James R. Hein
#152438
Overall Influence
#8118
Tsutomu Hatano
#152445
Overall Influence
#8119
Falko Fend
#152447
Overall Influence
#8120
Robert V. Shannon
#152466
Overall Influence
#8121
Dusan Krajcinovic
#80714
Overall Influence
1935 - 2007 (72 years)
Dusan Krajcinovic was a mechanics scientist. He was past member and chair of the Applied Mechanics Division of ASME. He served a term on the U. S. National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. He authored a review paper on damage mechanics that predates his book on the same subject.
Go to Profile#8122
Pr P. Sadayappan
#152484
Overall Influence
#8123
Mario Castro
#152485
Overall Influence
#8124
Yi-ke Guo
#152489
Overall Influence
#8125
Joseph Mariani
#114350
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Joseph Mariani is a French computer science researcher and pioneer in the field of speech processing. Education and career After obtaining a Doctor of Engineering degree in 1977 from the Pierre and Marie Curie University, Joseph Mariani joined the National Center for Scientific Research in the Computer Science Laboratory for Mechanics and Engineering Sciences as a researcher. He then was the head of the Speech Communication group from 1982 to 1985. He left for the United States where he worked as invited researcher at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center . Back in France, from 1987 to 2001 he w...
Go to Profile#8126
Julian David Gillmore
#152503
Overall Influence
#8127
Christian Cachin
#152535
Overall Influence
#8128
Hojat Veisi
#152540
Overall Influence
#8129
Shirui Pan
#152547
Overall Influence
#8130
Helmut Plattner
#152555
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
#8131
Rumi Nakamura
#134841
Overall Influence
Rumi Nakamura is an Earth scientist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She works on solar-terrestrial interactions, with a particular focus on the terrestrial magnetosphere. Nakamura won the 2014 European Geosciences Union Julius Bartels Medal.
Go to Profile#8132
Benton C. Clark
#152563
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
#8133
Ilya Kabakov
#6430
Overall Influence
1933 - 2023 (90 years)
Ilya Iosifovich Kabakov was a Russian–American conceptual artist, born in Dnipropetrovsk in what was then the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union. He worked for thirty years in Moscow, from the 1950s until the late 1980s. After that he lived and worked on Long Island, United States.
Go to Profile#8134
James E. Cofer
#24269
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
James Erwin Cofer, Sr. , is a former president of both Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, and the University of Louisiana at Monroe, Louisiana. He served as the tenth president of Missouri State University and eight years previously at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. His tenure at Missouri State came during a difficult economic period. According to Missouri State's official account of his presidency, Cofer "opened up the budget process, balanced the budget without cutting the academic departments even in light of the state appropriation reductions, gave equity raises to 40 percent of the faculty and started the process of raising the pay grades and salaries for staff.
Go to Profile#8135
Thomas Christian Kwee
#152594
Overall Influence
#8136
Xiandeng Hou
#152598
Overall Influence
#8137
Rolf Mentlein
#152609
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
#8138
Vittorina Zagonel
#152618
Overall Influence
#8139
Robert C. Burghardt
#152624
Overall Influence
#8140
Raphael Schiffmann
#152627
Overall Influence
#8141
Naoshi Dohmae
#152630
Overall Influence
#8142
Richang Hong
#152635
Overall Influence
#8143
Christian Coddet
#152639
Overall Influence
#8144
Horst D. Simon
#152640
Overall Influence
#8145
Nishith Gupta
#53716
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Nishith Gupta is an Indian-German molecular biologist and parasitologist known for his pioneering work in the field of Host–pathogen interaction and cell signalling. He is currently working as Professor, Senior Fellow of the Wellcome Trust-DBT and Head of the Department of Biological Sciences at the Hyderabad campus of Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani.
Go to Profile#8146
Michael J. Lancaster
#152649
Overall Influence
#8147
Pieter Evenepoel
#152661
Overall Influence
#8148
Bao-cai Yin
#152664
Overall Influence
#8149
Christian Gieger
#152666
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#8150
Yukihiko Sugimoto
#152672
Overall Influence
