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,
#10901
Brian Grant
#104530
Overall Influence
Brian Grant is a British music video and television director and producer. In 1982 he co-founded MGMM Productions with Scott Millaney, Russell Mulcahy, and David Mallet. MGMM became the most successful UK production company of the 80's. He started his career as a cameraman and went on to become a noted music video director, he also shot many movies and television series. He is famous for directing episodes of British television series including As If, Hex, Doctor Who, Party Animals, Sinchronicity, Britannia High, Highlander: The Series, Queen of Swords, Clocking Off, New Tricks, Sinbad, The Worst Witch, Our Girl, Video Killed the Radio Star, Lennon's Last Weekend, No Room For Ravers.
Go to Profile#10902
David Walker
#175946
Overall Influence
#10903
Seiji Isotani
#174525
Overall Influence
Seiji Isotani is a third-generation Japanese-Brazilian computer scientist, professor of computer science and learning technology at the University of Sao Paulo since 2019, where he also serves as director of the Applied Computing in Education Laboratory. From July 2022, Isotani joined the Harvard Graduate School of Education as a visiting professor. In the same year, Isotani was elected to the executive committee of the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society , making him the first-ever member from Latin America to occupy such position.
Go to Profile#10904
James Popple
#74565
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
James Popple is CEO of the Law Council of Australia. He is also an Honorary Professor in the College of Law and the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the Australian National University, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.
Go to Profile#10905
Ammasi Periasamy
#174587
Overall Influence
Ammasi Periasamy is an Indian American biophysicist who is a professor at the University of Virginia. He works on light microscopy, including the molecular imaging of living cells. He has developed a range of imaging systems, including confocal, multi-photon and fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy base devices.
Go to Profile#10906
Hantao Ji
#175947
Overall Influence
Hantao Ji is a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University. He received the John Dawson Award in 2002 for his work on magnetic reconnection. He is also a fellow of the American Physical Society.
Go to Profile#10907
Gong Xingao
#151138
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Gong Xingao is a Chinese physicist. He is a computational physicist best known for studying computational physics. Biography Gong was born into a family of farming background in June 1962 in Ansha Town of Changsha County, Hunan. He is the youngest of seven children. His parents died early. Gong secondary studied at Changsha County No. 3 High School. In July 1982 he graduated from Hunan Normal University. He received his master's degree and doctor's degree in science from the Institute of Solid State Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1985 and 1993, respectively.
Go to Profile#10908
Eiji Tanaka
#175982
Overall Influence
#10909
David Goldenberg
#175992
Overall Influence
#10910
Marvin Adams
#81682
Overall Influence
Marvin L. Adams is a nuclear engineer and computational physicist. Since April 2022, he has served as Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration in the Biden administration.
Go to Profile#10911
Jay Martin Tenenbaum
#173363
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Jay Martin "Marty" Tenenbaum is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is noted for his early work in artificial intelligence and as an Internet commerce pioneer. Biography Tenenbaum attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering, graduating in 1964 and 1966 respectively. He then attended Stanford University for his PhD, working under Jerome Feldman. He worked at SRI International as a research scientist in artificial intelligence and ran the AI lab at Schlumberger Palo Alto Research from 1980 to 1988. After Sch...
Go to Profile#10912
Carol MacKintosh
#174085
Overall Influence
Carol MacKintosh FRSB, is a cell and developmental biologist, Professor of Molecular Signalling and Head of Postgraduate Studies, at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee. Early career and research Carol MacKintosh received her education at the University of Aberdeen. She went on to do her PhD at the University of Glasgow. The PhD study focused on the branch-point between the tricarboxylic acid cycle and glyoxylate bypass in Escherichia coli, and was conducted alongside Professor Hugh Nimmo at the University of Glasgow. From 2003, Carol MacKintosh has worked at the University of Dundee and is working as a Professor of Molecular Signalling and Head of Postgraduate Studies.
Go to Profile#10913
Kiyoshi Kobayashi
#115449
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Kiyoshi Kobayashi is the current president of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, Director of the Management Research Center of the Graduate School of Management and Professor of Engineering, Infrastructure Economics and Management at the Department of Urban Management of Kyoto University. He was born in 1953 in Himeji, Hyōgo, Japan.
Go to Profile#10914
James Alty
#171086
Overall Influence
James Lenton Alty was a British computer scientist who was Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at Loughborough University. Alty was born in Haslingden, Lancashire on 21 August 1939. He died on 6 December 2022, at the age of 83.
Go to Profile#10915
Wen Zhong Shen
#176106
Overall Influence
#10916
Rex R. Perschbacher
#59660
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Rex R. Perschbacher was the Daniel J. Dykstra Endowed Chair at UC Davis School of Law, where he presided as Dean from 1998-2008. In addition to his impressive career as a legal scholar, he was credited with leading "an intellectual renaissance" at the Law School and with spearheading the King Hall Expansion and Renovation, a $30 million effort to upgrade the Law School's Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall.
Go to Profile#10917
Debasis Dash
#167343
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Debasis Dash is an Indian computational biologist and chief scientist at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology . Known for his research on proteomics and Big Data and Artificial Intelligence studies, his studies have been documented by way of a number of articles and ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 120 of them. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences, in 2014. He is appointed as the d...
Go to Profile#10918
Li Wei
#171267
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Li Wei is a Chinese computer scientist and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2002, he became President of Beihang University. Education Li graduated from the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics, Peking University in 1966. He then studied at the University of Edinburgh obtaining a PhD in computer science in 1983 supervised by Gordon Plotkin.
Go to Profile#10919
Meganne Christian
#63510
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Meganne Louise Wyatt is an member of the 2022 European Space Agency Astronaut Group, and Reserve Astronaut and Exploration Commercialisation Lead at the UK Space Agency. She was previously a materials scientist at the National Research Council in Bologna, Italy, and atmospheric physicist at Concordia Station in Antarctica.
Go to Profile#10920
Thomas Weber
#176121
Overall Influence
#10921
Ravi Bhushan
#174271
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Ravi Bhushan was a Professor of Chemistry at Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee who worked in the areas of natural products chemistry, protein chemistry, and chiral analysis by liquid chromatography.
Go to Profile#10922
Qiang Gao
#176185
Overall Influence
#10923
Francis Y. L. Chin
#176203
Overall Influence
#10924
Peter K J Robertson
#176208
Overall Influence
#10925
Imre Kacskovics
#59457
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Imre Kacskovics is a Hungarian immunologist and the current dean of the Faculty of Science of the Eötvös Loránd University. Life He was born in 1961 in Budapest and he has been married with 3 children.
Go to Profile#10926
Paul F. Hendrix
#147351
Overall Influence
Paul F. Hendrix is a professor in the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia. He is widely considered an expert in the biology and ecology of earthworm invasions.
Go to Profile#10927
Michael Butler
#176221
Overall Influence
#10928
Richard Washington
#139623
Overall Influence
Richard Washington is a South African climate scientist and meteorologist. He is Professor of Climate Science at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, as well as being the Director of the Radcliffe Meteorological Station, which has the longest single-site weather records in the United Kingdom. He is a fellow of Keble College, Oxford.
Go to Profile#10929
Arun K. Somani
#108473
Overall Influence
Arun K. Somani is Associate Dean for Research of College of Engineering, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Philip and Virginia Sproul Professor at Iowa State University. Somani is Elected Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for “contributions to theory and applications of computer networks” from 1999 to 2017 and Life Fellow of IEEE since 2018. He is Distinguished Engineer of Association for Computing Machinery and Elected Fellow of The American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Go to Profile#10930
Jennifer L Martin
#176250
Overall Influence
#10931
Massimo Mangino
#176262
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#10932
Birgitte Bak-Jensen
#175513
Overall Influence
Birgitte Bak-Jensen is a Danish professor and researcher at the Department of Energy Technology at Aalborg University. Her research is aimed at intelligent energy systems and active electrical grids.
Go to Profile#10933
Glorianna Davenport
#125071
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Glorianna Davenport is a New York-born media maker. A co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, Davenport directed the Interactive cinema research group from 1987–2004 and the Media Fabrics research group from 2004-2008. Davenport retired from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Summer of 2008. From 2008 to the present, she has managed the transition of Tidmarsh Farms, a former 610 acre cranberry farm in Plymouth Massachusetts, into conservation and wetland restoration. In 2011, Davenport founded Living Observatory, a non-profit, learning collaborative that focuses on documenting and sharing the long term story of wetland restoration of former cranberry farms.
Go to Profile#10934
Kristin Schirmer
#169700
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Kristin Schirmer is a German cell biologist and toxicologist. She is the Head of Department of Environmental Toxicology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology ] and also a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and ETH Zurich. Schirmer specializes in Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms of Toxicity, Aquatic Organisms, Chemical Hazard Assessment, Adverse Outcome Pathways, in vitro Alternatives to Animal Testing, Fish Cell Lines and Biomonitoring.
Go to Profile#10935
Sophia Hober
#173919
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Sophia Hober is a Swedish researcher in biotechnology and professor at The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Sophia Hober got her Master of Science in chemical engineering at KTH in 1989 and defended her doctorate in biochemistry in 1996. Since 2007, Hober is a professor of molecular biotechnology at KTH. During 2011–2015, Professor Hober served as dean at KTH and was part of the management team. Sophia Hober was elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 2012.
Go to Profile#10936
John L. Woolford Jr.
#160763
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
John L. Woolford Jr. is an American biologist currently at Carnegie Mellon University and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was the Head of the Department of Biological Science from 2008 to 2010, and again from 2014 to 2016.
Go to Profile#10937
Beric Skews
#87440
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Beric W. Skews is the director of the Flow Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is a leading expert in the field of compressible gas dynamics, and is author of over two hundred publications, mainly in the field of shock wave dynamics and high-speed photography.
Go to Profile#10938
Lyman Kipp
#57516
Overall Influence
1929 - 2014 (85 years)
Lyman Emmet Kipp, Jr. was a sculptor and painter who created pieces that are composed of strong vertical and horizontal objects and were often painted in bold primary colors recalling arrangements by De Stijl Constructivists. Kipp is an important figure in the development of the Primary Structure style which came to prominence in the mid-1960s.
Go to Profile#10939
Sergey Brin
#176370
Overall Influence
#10940
Ilaria Perugia
#109040
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Ilaria Perugia is an Italian applied mathematician and numerical analyst whose research concerns numerical methods for partial differential equations, especially Galerkin methods. She works at the University of Vienna in Austria as Professor of the Numerics of Partial Differential Equations.
Go to Profile#10941
Gerome Kamrowski
#51372
Overall Influence
1914 - 2004 (90 years)
Gerome Kamrowski was an American artist and pioneer in the Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist Movements in the United States. Early life and education Gerome Kamrowski was born in Warren, Minnesota, on January 19, 1914. In 1932 he enrolled in the Saint Paul School of Art , where he studied with Leroy Turner, and Cameron Booth. Both Turner and Booth had been students of Hans Hofmann, and were also associated with the Abstraction-Création group in Paris. It was from these peers that Kamrowski was introduced to a "kind of expressionist cubism." In 1933 Kamrowski was awarded a scholarship to the Art Students League, where he would study in New York under Hans Hofmann.
Go to Profile#10942
Hsiao-Wen Chen
#121912
Overall Influence
Hsiao-Wen Chen is a Taiwanese-American astronomer who uses absorption spectroscopy to study baryonic "normal matter" in the intergalactic medium and galactic halos, and the connections between this matter and the matter in star-forming regions of galaxies. She is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#10943
Victor Lange
#51088
Overall Influence
1908 - 1996 (88 years)
Victor Lange was a renowned Germanist, known primarily for his work at Princeton University. Biography Born in Leipzig, Germany, he obtained his M.A. degree from the University College of the University of Toronto in 1931, and his Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig in 1934 with a dissertation entitled "Die lyrische Anthologie im England des 18. Jahrhunderts ." He taught at Toronto in the 1930s and, from 1938 onwards, at Cornell University. He moved to Princeton University in 1957, where he was the founding chairman of both the German Department and the Department of Comparative Literature.
Go to Profile#10944
Trevor K. Archer
#172867
Overall Influence
Trevor K. Archer is an American public health researcher who is a National Institutes of Health Distinguished Investigator and deputy director at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. He leads the Chromatin and Gene Expression Group, who investigate chromatin, epigenetics and embryonic stem cells pluripotency.
Go to Profile#10945
Arnold Machin
#27347
Overall Influence
1911 - 1999 (88 years)
Arnold Machin OBE RA FRSS was a British artist, sculptor, and coin and postage stamp designer. Biography Machin was born Stoke-on-Trent in 1911. He started work at the age of 14 as an apprentice china painter at the Minton Pottery. During the Depression he learnt to sculpt at Stoke-on-Trent College of Art, which was opposite the Minton factory. In the 1930s he moved to Derby, where he worked at Royal Crown Derby and met his wife Patricia. He went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London.
Go to Profile#10946
Judith Gal-Ezer
#163559
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Judith Gal-Ezer is an Israeli computer scientist and computer science educator known for her development of the high school computer science curriculum in Israel. She is a professor emerita at the Open University of Israel.
Go to Profile#10947
Tim Denvir
#169942
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Tim Denvir is a British software engineer, specialising in formal methods. Denvir studied for a Mathematics degree at Trinity College, Cambridge during 1959–1962. Before his degree, during 1958–1959, Tim Denvir was an engineering assistant at Texas Instruments, designing, building and testing electronic circuits using discrete semiconductors. After his degree, during 1962–1965, he was a systems programmer with Elliott Brothers, programming operating systems and device drivers. During 1965–1969, he was a systems programmer at the University of London Atlas Computing Service, undertaking systems programming for the Atlas computer and compiler design.
Go to Profile#10948
Karthik Ram
#163997
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Karthik Ram is a research scientist at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science and member of the Initiative for Global Change Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for being the co-founder of rOpenSci. Ram's work focuses on global change, data science, and open research software.
Go to Profile#10949
Sally Davenport
#65016
Overall Influence
Sally Jane Davenport is an Aotearoa-New Zealand academic and a full professor at the Victoria University of Wellington. She is also Director of the National Science Challenge, Science for Technological Innovation . SfTI is a 10-year science investment by the Aotearoa-New Zealand Government with a mission to enhance the capacity of Aotearoa-New Zealand to use physical sciences and engineering for economic growth and prosperity.
Go to Profile#10950
Fernando Rey
#176439
Overall Influence
