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,
#9101
Marcel Martin
#159998
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
#9102
Lone Skov
#160002
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#9103
Satish Iyengar
#160012
Overall Influence
#9104
Pietro Ruggieri
#160017
Overall Influence
#9105
Maarten Naesens
#160021
Overall Influence
#9106
Ronald J. Quinn
#160024
Overall Influence
#9107
Patrice Godefroid
#160025
Overall Influence
#9108
Antonella Molinaro
#160032
Overall Influence
#9109
Fisher Yu
#160033
Overall Influence
#9110
Piyush Kumar Gupta
#160037
Overall Influence
#9111
Amjad Rehman
#160041
Overall Influence
#9112
Saidur Rahman
#139992
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Saidur Rahman is a computer scientist, graph theorist, and professor at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. He is an author of the book Planar Graph Drawing. He is known for his contribution in graph drawing, graph algorithms, computational geometry, and several other branches of theoretical computer science. Together with his student Md. Iqbal Hossain he defined an interesting structure of spanning trees in embedded planar graphs called good spanning trees.
Go to Profile#9113
Mor Harchol-Balter
#160060
Overall Influence
#9114
David Y. Thomas
#160063
Overall Influence
#9115
Marco Carini
#160066
Overall Influence
#9116
Akira Sekiguchi
#160091
Overall Influence
#9117
William R. Wagner
#160092
Overall Influence
#9118
Walther von Hahn
#129908
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Walther von Hahn is a German linguist and computer scientist. From 1977 to 2007, von Hahn taught Computer Science and Linguistics at Universität Hamburg. Education and career Von Hahn studied German linguistics and literature, philosophy, and Latin and Protestant theology in Marburg/Lahn from 1962 to 1969. He received his PhD at the same university, with Prof. Dr. Ludwig Erich Schmitt. He moved to Hamburg University where he gave seminars in German linguistics, becoming a faculty professor in 1977. At that time, research and teaching shifted to more formal fields in the German seminar thereat.
Go to Profile#9119
Veda Catherine Storey
#160109
Overall Influence
#9120
Osamu Sato
#160114
Overall Influence
#9121
Roberto Sitia
#160116
Overall Influence
#9122
Christopher Juhlin
#160118
Overall Influence
#9123
Candido Fabrizio Pirri
#160128
Overall Influence
#9124
Miguel de Icaza
#128643
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Miguel de Icaza is a Mexican programmer, best known for starting the GNOME, Mono, and Xamarin projects. Biography Early years De Icaza was born in Mexico City and studied Mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico , but dropped out before getting a degree to work in IT. He came from a family of scientists in which his father is a physicist and his mother a biologist. He started writing free software in 1992.
Go to Profile#9125
Albrecht Stenzinger
#160138
Overall Influence
#9126
Daniel Shouval
#160139
Overall Influence
#9127
Engin Yıldırım
#24676
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Engin Yıldırım is a Turkish professor of Labor Economics and the vice-president of the Constitutional Court of Turkey. Early life Engin Yıldırım completed his high school education in 1983 in Beylerbeyi High School. He graduated from the department of Labor Economics and Industrial Relations at Istanbul University in 1987. Yıldırım received his BA from Warwick Business School at University of Warwick in 1989, and PhD from Faculty of Economics and Social Studies, Department of Sociology at University of Manchester in 1994.
Go to Profile#9128
William L. Baker
#160170
Overall Influence
#9129
David Walden
#93953
Overall Influence
1942 - 2022 (80 years)
David Corydon Walden was an American computer scientist who contributed to the engineering development of the ARPANET, a precursor of the modern internet. He specifically contributed to the Interface Message Processor, which was the packet switching node for the ARPANET. Walden was a contributor to IEEE Computer Society's Annals of the History of Computing and was a member of the TeX Users Group.
Go to Profile#9130
Hauke Hennecke
#160205
Overall Influence
#9131
Gianluca Bontempi
#160215
Overall Influence
#9132
Matthias Peter
#160216
Overall Influence
#9133
Anant Sahai
#160230
Overall Influence
#9134
Wan Kim Seow
#160231
Overall Influence
#9135
Mahsa Mohaghegh
#151411
Overall Influence
Mahsa Mohaghegh is an Iranian-born New Zealand computer engineer specialising in artificial intelligence and natural language processing. She is a professor of information technology and software engineering at Auckland University of Technology.
Go to Profile#9136
Arnaud Perrier
#160243
Overall Influence
#9137
Dachamir Hotza
#160250
Overall Influence
#9138
Atsunori Kashiwagi
#160255
Overall Influence
#9139
Jacques Demongeot
#160258
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
#9140
Bastien Chopard
#160268
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
#9141
Charles E. Schwartz
#160272
Overall Influence
#9142
Marc Ouellette
#160283
Overall Influence
#9143
Thomas Nilsson
#160297
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
#9144
Ashish Goel
#87561
Overall Influence
Ashish Goel is an American professor whose research focuses on the design, analysis and applications of algorithms. He is a professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Early life and early education Ashish Goel was born in Uttar Pradesh in India. He did his schooling at Uttar Pradesh including at St. Peter's, Agra. He was ranked first in IIT JEE 1990. He graduated with a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur in 1994. He then went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1999.
Go to Profile#9145
Bran V. Selic
#160302
Overall Influence
#9146
Jianming Wang
#160304
Overall Influence
#9147
Giulio Malucelli
#160310
Overall Influence
#9148
Kai Kuang. Ma
#160326
Overall Influence
#9149
Brian Raught
#160342
Overall Influence
#9150
David Laidlaw
#142236
Overall Influence
David Hales Laidlaw is an American computer scientist. He is currently Professor of Computer Science at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. In 2014 he became a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for contributions to data visualization and analytics. In 2019, he was named to the IEEE Visualization Academy.
Go to Profile