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,

#10301

Jeanne L. Noble

Jeanne L. Noble
#45783
Overall Influence
1926 - 2002 (76 years)
Jeanne Laveta Noble was an American educator who served on education commissions for three U.S. presidents. Noble was the first to analyze and publish the experiences of African American women in college. She served as president of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority within which she founded that group's National Commission on Arts and Letters. Noble was the first African-American board member of the Girl Scouts of the USA, and the first to serve the U.S. government's Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services . She headed the Women's Job Corps Program in the 1960s, and was th...
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#10302

Peter Robinson

#101004
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Peter Robinson is Professor of Computer Technology at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in England, where he works in the Rainbow Group on computer graphics and interaction. He is also a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College and lives in Cambridge.
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#10303

Sarah Ann Douglas

#117633
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Sarah Ann Douglas is a distinguished computer scientist, known for her work in human-computer interaction , a field of computer science that she has helped pioneer, and, in particular, pointing devices and haptic interactions, WWW interfaces and bioinformatics, and visualization and visual interfaces. She is a Professor Emerita of Computer and Information Science and a member of the Computational Science Institute at the University of Oregon.
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#10304

Georges El Fakhri

#168952
Overall Influence
Georges El Fakhri from the Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2016 for contributions to biological imaging.
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#10305

Sonia Aïssa

#131405
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Sonia Aïssa is a professor in the Institut national de la recherche scientifique of the Université du Québec, in the INRS Research Centre for Energy, Materials, and Telecommunications. Aïssa earned a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering in 1998 from McGill University, following which she joined the INRS.
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#10306

Benjamin Lev

Benjamin Lev
#107491
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Benjamin Lev is a former University Trustee Professor of Decision Sciences and Management Information Systems Department at Drexel University. He has been a prolific author and has made significant contributions in Operations Research and Management Science. He has contributed to the areas of inventory control, mathematical programming, and operations planning and scheduling. He is well known for his developments of Inventory Control Models, Transportation Problems, DEA and Fuzzy Decision Analyses.
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#10307

Rhonda Franklin

#106500
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Rhonda Franklin is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Minnesota. She is a microwave and radio frequency engineer whose research focuses on microelectronic mechanical structures in radio and microwave applications. She has won several awards, including the 1998 NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the 2013 Sara Evans Leadership Award, the 2017 John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising, and the 2018 Minnesota African American Heritage Calendar Award for her contributions to higher education.
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#10308

Hans-Jörg Kreowski

#157352
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Hans-Jörg Kreowski is a professor for computer science at the University of Bremen in North West Germany. His primary research area is theoretical computer science with an emphasis on graph transformation, algebraic specification, and syntactic picture processing. He is also a member of the .
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#10309

Michael Widenius

Michael Widenius
#148852
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Ulf Michael Widenius is the main author of the original version of the open source MySQL database, a founding member of the MySQL AB company and CTO of the MariaDB Corporation AB. Additionally, he is a founder and general partner at venture capital firm OpenOcean.
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#10310

Holly Martin Smith

#17285
Overall Influence
Holly Martin Smith is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Her publications focus on questions in normative ethics, moral responsibility and structural questions common to normative theories.
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#10311

Sorin Coțofană

#135847
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Sorin Coțofană is a Quantum & Computer engineering Professor at Delft University of Technology. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2017 for contributions to nanocomputing architectures and paradigms.
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#10312

Bramah N. Singh

#67032
Overall Influence
1938 - 2014 (76 years)
Bramah N. Singh was a cardiac pharmacologist and academic. Early life and education Born in Fiji, he graduated in medicine from University of Otago in 1963 and completed residency at Auckland Hospital, followed by a cardiology fellowship at Green Lane Hospital. In 1969, Singh was awarded a Nuffield travelling fellowship and moved to Oxford to work with Miles Vaughan Williams. There, he worked on the anti-arrhythmic properties of drugs including amiodarone. Such work helped to refine the characteristics of Class III compounds in the developing Vaughan Williams classification.
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#10313

Duminda Wijesekera

#134271
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Duminda Wijesekera is an American Computer Scientist of Sri Lankan descent. He is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University and acting chair of Cyber Security Engineering Department. He is also a visiting research scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology . He has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota and another PhD in Mathematical Logic from Cornell University . He has a Bachelors in Mathematics from University of Colombo. He also holds a courtesy appointments at the Computer Science Department at the Naval Postgraduate School, NIST.
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#10314

Mitchell Wand

#169131
Overall Influence
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#10315

Tim Sparwasser

#98642
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Tim Dominik Sparwasser is a German physician, microbiologist and infection immunologist. In 2018, he became director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene in Mainz. Education and career Sparwasser studied human medicine at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz and at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich as a scholarship holder of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes; he received his doctor of medicine in 1996. He continued his research first at the Institute for Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Hygiene at the Technical University Munich and afterwards at the...
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#10316

Simon Baker

#169149
Overall Influence
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#10317

Catherine Richards

#169042
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Catherine Richards is a Canadian new media artist. Richards is known for her work with early virtual reality technologies. She was the first artist to use VR technology in a work of art in Canada, which was incorporated in her 1991 artwork Spectral Bodies.
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#10318

Ali Reza Ashrafi

#99175
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Ali Reza Ashrafi was an Iranian mathematician who worked in computational group theory and mathematical chemistry. Ashrafi was a professor at the department of pure mathematics of the University of Kashan and the vice president of the International Academy of Mathematical Chemistry.
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#10319

Ngoc Thanh Nguyen

#169197
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Nguyễn Ngọc Thành, Ph.D., D.Sc. is a Vietnamese informatician at the Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland, and is the head of Department of Applied Informatics in the Faculty of Computer Science and Telecommunication Technology.
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#10320

Sylvia Snowden

#93346
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Sylvia Snowden is an African American abstract painter who works with acrylics, oil pastels, and mixed media to create textured works that convey the "feel of paint". Many museums have hosted her art in exhibits, while several have added her works to their permanent collections.
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#10321

Richard White

#169205
Overall Influence
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#10322

Almadena Chtchelkanova

#140623
Overall Influence
Almadena Yurevna Chtchelkanova is a Russian-American scientist. She is a program director in the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations at the National Science Foundation. Education Chtchelkanova completed a Ph.D. in physics from Moscow State University in 1988. In 1996, she earned a M.A. in the department of computer sciences at University of Texas at Austin. Her master's thesis was titled The application of object-oriented analysis to sockets system calls library testing. James C. Browne was her advisor.
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#10323

Ole Christian Lingjærde

#169232
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
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#10324

Peipei Ping

#165593
Overall Influence
Peipei Ping is an academic specializing in cardiac physiology, system biology and data science. Education Peipei Ping received a BS in biomedical engineering at Zhejiang University in 1985, and a PhD in cardiovascular physiology at University of Arizona in 1990, under the direction of Paul C. Johnson. She completed post-doctoral research at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at University of California San Diego .
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#10325

Min Chen

#150216
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Min Chen is a professor in the School of Computer Science and Technology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology . His research focuses on Big data, Internet of Things, Machine to Machine Communications, Body Area Networks, Body Sensor Networks, E-healthcare, Mobile Cloud Computing, Cloud-Assisted Mobile Computing, Ubiquitous Network and Services, Mobile Agent, and Multimedia Transmission over Wireless Network, etc. He has been an IEEE Senior Member since 2009.
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#10326

Ramesh Chandra

#169312
Overall Influence
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#10327

Ute Ebert

#50751
Overall Influence
Ute M. Ebert is a German physicist known for her research on plasma physics and electric discharge in gases. She is a researcher in the Netherlands at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, where she heads the research group on multiscale dynamics, and a part-time full professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology, affiliated with the Elementary Processes in Gas Discharges group.
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#10328

Kevin M Lynch

#169317
Overall Influence
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#10329

Samaresh Mitra

#38258
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Samaresh Mitra is an Indian bioinorganic chemist and an INSA Senior Scientist at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology . He is known for his researches on inorganic paramagnetic complexes and low-symmetry transition metal complexes and is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, the National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian scie...
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#10330

Alan Taylor

Alan Taylor
#74659
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Alan Taylor is an American television director, film director, screenwriter, and television producer. He is best known for his work on television series such as The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones. He also directed films such as Palookaville, Thor: The Dark World, Terminator Genisys, and The Many Saints of Newark.
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#10331

Arvind Krishnamurthy

#169350
Overall Influence
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#10332

Luca Regli

#134642
Overall Influence
Luca Paolo Eugenio Regli is a neurosurgeon and full professor and chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery of the University Hospital of Zürich since October 2012. He is the son of , a Swiss professor of neurology and founder of the Foundation Franco Regli for the Research in the Field of Neurodegenerative Diseases.
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#10333

Janusz Smulko

Janusz Smulko
#108491
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Janusz Smulko is a Polish electronics engineer, full professor of Gdańsk University of Technology. Research Interests: reliability assessment of electronic devices , fluctuation-enhanced sensing , gas sensing, Raman spectroscopy, noise in biological systems, signal processing. Since September 2016 – Vice-Rector for Scientific Research, Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland.
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#10334

Oliver Friedmann

#95748
Overall Influence
Oliver Friedmann is a German computer scientist and mathematician known for his work on parity games and the simplex algorithm. Friedmann earned his doctorate's degree from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 2011 under the supervision of Martin Hofmann and Martin Lange.
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#10335

Kavitha Telikepalli

#158599
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Kavitha Telikepalli is an Indian computer scientist known for her research on graph algorithms and combinatorial optimization, particularly concerning matchings, cycle bases, and graph spanners. She is a professor in the School of Technology & Computer Science at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
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#10336

N. Viswanadham

#103336
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Nukala Viswanadham , an Indian Academic, is currently an INSA Senior Scientist at the Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science. He is a Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences. He is an elected Fellow of Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Academy of Engineering, and IEEE. He was a recipient of the S.K. Mitra Memorial Award of INAE. He worked at the Indian Institute of Science as a Professor, at the National University of Singapore, and Indian School of Business.
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#10337

Jan Krissler

#88814
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Jan Krissler, better known by his pseudonym starbug, is a German computer scientist and hacker. He is best known for his work on defeating biometric systems, most prominently the iPhone's TouchID. He is also an active member of the German and European hacker community.
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#10338

Neil Robertson

#169401
Overall Influence
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#10339

Janko Kos

#169419
Overall Influence
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#10340

Otto Leiberich

Otto Leiberich
#76285
Overall Influence
1927 - 2015 (88 years)
Otto Leiberich was a German cryptologist and mathematician. Leiberich is most notable for establishing the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik in 1991. Life Leiberich started his career during World War II, conscripted as a soldier and working as a cryptanalyst in Chi IV of the OKW/Chi.
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#10341

Charles Gilchrist Adams

#27898
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
Charles Gilchrist Adams was an American pastor who served as the first Nickerson Professor of the Practice of Ethics and Ministry at Harvard Divinity School from 2007 to 2012. Biography Charles Gilchrist Adams was born on December 13, 1936 in Detroit, Michigan.
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#10342

Thomas Schneider

#169467
Overall Influence
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#10343

Rich Gossweiler

#154766
Overall Influence
Rich Gossweiler is a research scientist with Google whose area of expertise is in HCI, interaction design, front-end web development, and System architecture. Education Gossweiler graduated from the College of William and Mary, majoring in Computer Science and minoring in mathematics. He received both his master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, focusing on computer science and perceptual psychology in relation to 3D graphics and VR. He was Randy Pausch's first Ph.D. student.
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#10344

Liang-Jie Zhang

#124960
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Liang-Jie Zhang is a computer scientist, a former Research Staff Member at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Senior Vice President, Chief Scientist, & Director of Research at Kingdee International Software Group Company Limited, and previously a director of The Open Group.
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#10345

J A Gareth Williams

#169492
Overall Influence
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#10346

Cristina Bazgan

#70743
Overall Influence
Cristina Bazgan is a French computer scientist who studies combinatorial optimization and graph theory problems from the points of view of parameterized complexity, fine-grained complexity, approximation algorithms, and regret.
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#10347

Andrea L. Thomaz

#111810
Overall Influence
Andrea L. Thomaz is a senior research scientist in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and Director of Socially Intelligent Machines Lab. She specializes in Human-Robot Interaction, Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Machine Learning.
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#10348

T.H. Tse

#90415
Overall Influence
T.H. Tse is a Hong Kong academic who is a professor and researcher in program testing and debugging. He is ranked internationally as the second most prolific author in metamorphic testing. According to Bruel et al., "Research on integrated formal and informal techniques can trace its roots to the work of T.H. Tse in the mid-eighties." The application areas of his research include object-oriented software, services computing, pervasive computing, concurrent systems, imaging software, and numerical programs. In addition, he creates graphic designs for non-government organizations.
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#10349

John R. Everett

#39312
Overall Influence
1918 - 1992 (74 years)
John Rutherford Everett was a college administrator. He was President of Hollins College, the first Chancellor of the Municipal College System of the City of New York, and the President of the New School for Social Research.
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#10350

Marvin Zelkowitz

#105134
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Marvin Victor Zelkowitz is an American computer scientist and engineer. Zelkowitz earned a degree in mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1967 and a master's degree and doctorate in computer science at Cornell University in 1969 and 1971, respectively. He then taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. While holding a professorship within the Department of Computer Science and the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies , he was also affiliated with the Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering, since renamed The Fraunhofer USA Center Mid-Atlantic .
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