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,
#11151
Derek Jarman
#39722
Overall Influence
1942 - 1994 (52 years)
Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English artist, film maker, costume designer, stage designer, writer, gardener, and gay rights activist. Biography Jarman was born at the Royal Victoria Nursing Home in Northwood, Middlesex, England, the son of Elizabeth Evelyn and Lancelot Elworthy Jarman. His father was a Royal Air Force officer, born in New Zealand.
Go to Profile#11152
Jan Jansa
#178313
Overall Influence
#11153
Georg Essl
#173846
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Georg Essl is an Austrian computer scientist and musician, who works in the areas of human-computer interaction, acoustics, mobile computing and mobile music. He is a visiting research professor at the College of Letters & Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and he is also affiliated with the Center for 21st Century Studies. Prior to that he was an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#11154
Yi Mu
#175474
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Yi Mu is a professor in Faculty of Data Science, City University of Macau, SAR, Macau, China. He obtained his PhD from the Australian National University in 1994. He was a professor of computer science at the University of Wollongong prior to his job as a professor at Fujian Normal University during 2018 and 2020. He has published more than 500 papers in journals and conference proceedings in cryptography, information security, quantum cryptography, and quantum optics. He was Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Applied Cryptography
Go to Profile#11155
Catherine Gebotys
#173347
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Catherine H. Gebotys is a Canadian computer engineer specializing in the security of embedded systems and in cryptographic algorithms more She is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the
Go to Profile#11156
Gheorghe Benga
#24690
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Gheorghe Benga is a Romanian physician and molecular biologist. He is professor and chairman in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology of the Iuliu Hațieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and a titular member of the Romanian Academy.
Go to Profile#11157
Daowen Wang
#178341
Overall Influence
#11158
Hongbin Li
#178351
Overall Influence
#11159
Ji-Seon Kim
#104813
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Ji-Seon Kim is a South Korean physicist. She is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Centre for Plastic Electronics at Imperial College London. Early life and education Kim grew up in South Korea, and achieved a BSc in physics at Ewha Womans University in 1992. She completed a theoretical physics MSc under the supervision of Prof. Jeong Weon Wu in 1994 before moving to the UK to work at the University of Cambridge. Here she joined the growing research group of Professor Richard Friend, earning a PhD entitled Polymer Light-Emitting Diodes: Anode Surface Conditioning and Device Performan...
Go to Profile#11160
Denis Wood
#59297
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Denis Wood is an artist, author, cartographer and a former professor of Design at North Carolina State University. Born in 1945, Wood grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, receiving a BA in English from then Western Reserve University . He received an MA and a PhD in geography from Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts. Wood taught environmental psychology, landscape history, and design in then School of Design at North Carolina State University from 1974 through 1996, living and raising his family in Boylan Heights. Beginning in 1996, Wood spent over two years in prison on a conviction for ...
Go to Profile#11161
Sathyanarayana Srikanta
#50784
Overall Influence
Sathyanarayana Srikanta is a researcher in the field of endocrinology. Since 1993 he is serving as the medical director at Samatvam Endocrinology Diabetes Center and Jnana Sanjeevini Medical Center in Bangalore, India. He became faculty at the Harvard Medical School and Clinical Investigator of National Institute of Health, USA at the age of 29 years.
Go to Profile#11162
Sanjiva Weerawarana
#162692
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (125 years)
Sanjiva Weerawarana is a CEO, software developer and open-source software evangelist. He is known for his work on Web Services standards including WSDL, BPEL, and WS-Addressing. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of WSO2, an open-source middleware company, and creator of the Ballerina programming language. His involvement with the Apache Software Foundation includes project work on SOAP, Apache Axis and Apache Axis2.
Go to Profile#11163
Hagit Hel-Or
#170946
Overall Influence
Hagit Zabrodsky Hel-Or is an Israeli computer scientist known for her research in image processing, computer vision, and the applications of symmetry to pattern matching and computational chemistry. She is a faculty member in the computer science department at the University of Haifa.
Go to Profile#11164
Mary Lovelace O'Neal
#99922
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Mary Lovelace O'Neal is an American artist and arts educator. Her work is focused on abstracted mixed-media and minimalism. She is a Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley and retired from teaching in 2006. O'Neal's art has been exhibited widely throughout North America and internationally, with group and solo shows in Italy, France, Chile, Senegal and Nigeria. She lives and works in Oakland, California, and maintains a studio in Chile.
Go to Profile#11165
Giorgio Battistelli
#178435
Overall Influence
#11166
Todd M. Allen
#160470
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Todd Mackenzie Allen is a Canadian-born immunologist and virologist at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, and a Professor of Medicine at Harvard University. He is a specialist in HIV vaccine design and the sequence evolution and diversity of HIV and hepatitis C virus . More recently, his work is focused on developing novel immunotherapeutic approaches towards a functional cure of HIV, including chimeric antigen receptor T cell immunotherapy and gene editing approaches capable of protecting against HIV infection.
Go to Profile#11167
David Horn
#176664
Overall Influence
David Horn FRSE, is a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator, professor of parasite molecular biology, deputy head of the Division of Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery and deputy director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Anti-Infectives Research in the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee. His research is focused on antigenic variation, drug action and resistance and the application of genetic screens to African trypanosomes: parasitic protists that cause sleeping sickness or Human African Trypanosomiasis and the livestock disease, nagana.
Go to Profile#11168
Atsushi Nakajima
#178451
Overall Influence
#11169
Caterina Scoglio
#171305
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Caterina M. Scoglio is an Italian network scientist and computer engineer, the LeRoy and Aileen Paslay Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Kansas State University, the director of the Network Science and Engineering Group in the department, and the former chair of the IEEE Control Systems Society Technical Committee on Medical and Health Care Systems.
Go to Profile#11170
Mario Pulvirenti
#80339
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Mario Pulvirenti is an Italian mathematician, Professor emeritus of Mathematical Physics at Sapienza University of Rome. Biography Mario Pulvirenti received a master's degree in physics from the Sapienza University in 1970, where he is Professor emeritus of Mathematical Physics. He also worked at University of L'Aquila and University of Camerino. He spent research periods at École Normale Supérieure, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques and Rutgers University. He is currently member of Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica and of Accademia dei Lincei, one of the highest Italian academic in...
Go to Profile#11171
Eric Sunderland
#55361
Overall Influence
1930 - 2010 (80 years)
Eric Sunderland, was a Welsh anthropologist and academic. He served as Principal and then Vice-Chancellor of the University College of North Wales from 1984 to 1995, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales from 1989 to 1991. He had previously taught at the University of Durham, where he had risen to be Professor of Anthropology and Pro Vice-Chancellor . In retirement, he held a number of royal appointments: he served as High Sheriff of Gwynedd for 1998/1999, and as Lord Lieutenant of Gwynedd from 2000 to 2006.
Go to Profile#11172
Charles M. Super
#52052
Overall Influence
Charles M. Super is a professor of Human Development & Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut. and he has held academic appointments at the Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Pennsylvania State University. He is co-director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Health, and Human Development. He has directed or participated in research projects on early human development and family life in the Netherlands, Kenya, Zambia, Guatemala, Colombia, Haiti, and Bangladesh, as well as the United States. He has won a Distinguished Service Award from the Univer...
Go to Profile#11173
Eran Meshorer
#150684
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Eran Meshorer is an Israeli scientist, professor of epigenetics and stem cells at the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, and The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Meshorer is the Arthur Gutterman Chair for Stem Cell Research.
Go to Profile#11174
Sarah Derrett
#66538
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Sarah Derrett is a New Zealand Injury prevention academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Otago. Academic career After a 2001 PhD titled 'Surgical prioritisation and patients : assessment, process and outcome' at the University of Otago, Derrett moved to the Massey University and then back to Otago, rising to full professor in 2017.
Go to Profile#11175
Kenny Smith
#178528
Overall Influence
#11176
Paul Soulellis
#105651
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Paul Soulellis is an American graphic designer, artist, and educator. His writings and work in the field of experimental publishing and network culture are cited in influential scholarly research. His publications are collected and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. He works in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island.
Go to Profile#11177
Michael I. Miller
#178553
Overall Influence
#11178
Ronald Aarts
#148357
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Ronald M. Aarts, , is a Dutch electrical engineer and physicist, inventor and professor in the field of electroacoustics and in biomedical signal processing technology. Biography Ronald M. Aarts received a BSc degree in electrical engineering in 1977 and a PhD in physics from Delft University of Technology in 1995. He joined the Optics group at Philips Research Laboratories , Eindhoven, Netherlands, in 1977. His research initially involved servo systems and signal processing for use in both Video Longplay players and compact disc players. In 1984 he joined the Acoustics Group at Philips working on developing CAD tools and signal processing for loudspeaker systems.
Go to Profile#11179
Linda Lawton
#23205
Overall Influence
Linda Lawton, Ph.D., FRSE is a Scottish researcher in microcystins and toxins produced by cyanobacteria and has researched into the impact of the so-called 'blue-green algae" from drinking water supply. Her detection method is now used worldwide and was used by the World Health Organization to develop drinking water safety standards, scientists are trained in it from Sri Lanka to fish farms in Scotland, and Lawton is investigating potential cancer treatments and positive uses such as digesting waste plastics in microbiology. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021. La...
Go to Profile#11180
Michael Burrows
#178569
Overall Influence
#11181
Richard Hunt
#47378
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Richard Hunt is a Canadian First Nations artist from coastal British Columbia. Hunt was born in 1951 at Alert Bay, B.C., but has lived most of his life in Victoria, B.C. On his father's side, he is a descendant of the renowned Native ethnologist George Hunt. He began carving at the age of thirteen. In 1973 he began carving with his father Henry Hunt at Thunderbird Park at the British Columbia Provincial Museum in Victoria.
Go to Profile#11182
Steven A. Leadon
#95239
Overall Influence
Steven A. Leadon is a former professor of radiation oncology at the University of North Carolina. In 2003, a university found that Leadon had fabricated and falsified data in his research on DNA repair. In 2006, the United States Office of Research Integrity came to the same conclusion, saying that "Leadon engaged in scientific misconduct by falsifying DNA samples and constructing falsified figures for experiments done in his laboratory to support claimed findings of defects in a DNA repair process that involved rapid repair of DNA damage in the transcribed strand of active genes, included i...
Go to Profile#11183
Thomas Walther
#178603
Overall Influence
#11184
Robert Simon Sherratt
#169597
Overall Influence
Robert Simon Sherratt from the University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, UK was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012 for contributions to embedded signal processing in consumer electronic devices and products.
Go to Profile#11185
Jiwchar Ganor
#149442
Overall Influence
Jiwchar Ganor is a professor in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and currently serves as Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences. Education Ganor received his B.Sc. in Geology and Biology and an M.Sc. in Geology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The title of his M.Sc. thesis was Halite Islands in the Southern Basin of the Dead Sea. In his thesis, written under the supervision of Prof. Amitai Katz, he explored the formation of salt cones and mushroom-like structures in the southern basin of the Dead Sea. He showed that thes...
Go to Profile#11186
Sanket Goel
#92472
Overall Influence
Sanket Goel is an Indian Professor working with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, Hyderabad, Telangana. He is the Principal Investigator of MEMS, Microfluidics and Nanoelectronics Lab and Founding Director of Cleome Innovations Pvt. Ltd. Currently, he is also serving as a Dean where he spearheads Research and Innovation activities across all the campuses of BITS Pilani.
Go to Profile#11187
Oleg Serbin
#148667
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Serbin Oleh is a Ukrainian librarian. He is Director of the Maksymovych Scientific Library of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and Associate Professor of Information, library science and archiving of the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. Oleh is specialised in the field of systematization, indexing, library and information classifications in Ukraine.
Go to Profile#11188
Vivian Chu
#128395
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
Vivian Chu is an American roboticist and entrepreneur, specializing in the field of human-robot interaction. She is Chief Technology Officer at Diligent Robotics, a company she co-founded in 2017 for creating autonomous, mobile, socially intelligent robots.
Go to Profile#11189
Kevin McCurley
#93204
Overall Influence
Kevin Snow McCurley is a mathematician, computer scientist, and cryptographer, and a former research scientist at Google. He has written publications about information retrieval, algorithms, parallel computing, cryptography, and number theory.
Go to Profile#11190
Maria Vittoria Salvetti
#169828
Overall Influence
Maria Vittoria Salvetti is an Italian aerospace engineer specializing in computational fluid dynamics and especially in the large eddy simulation of turbulence and complex flows. She is a professor of fluid dynamics at the University of Pisa, where she directs the Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering.
Go to Profile#11191
Robert Armstrong
#67569
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Robert Armstrong is a cartoonist, illustrator, painter, and musician. He is known for his underground comix character Mickey Rat, for popularizing the term "couch potato," and for being a member of Robert Crumb's band the Cheap Suit Serenaders.
Go to Profile#11192
Sonny Grosso
#76463
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Salvatore Anthony Grosso , known as Sonny Grosso, was an American film producer, television producer, and NYPD detective, noted for his role in the case made famous in the book and film versions of the French Connection.
Go to Profile#11193
Philomena Nyarko
#46850
Overall Influence
Philomena Efua Nyarko is a Ghanaian statistician and academic, and the former Government Statistician for Ghana, chief executive of the Ghana Statistical Service . Education Nyarko has a PhD in social statistics, awarded by the University of Southampton, United Kingdom. She also studied at the University of Ghana, and was awarded a graduate diploma in population studies.
Go to Profile#11194
Shozo Shimamoto
#61266
Overall Influence
1928 - 2013 (85 years)
was a Japanese artist. Having studied with Jirō Yoshihara, the future Gutai leader, from 1947, Shimamoto was a key founding member of Gutai along with Yoshihara and fifteen others in August, 1954. He was close to the leader Yoshihara and actively engaged in the early activities and group administrations. He worked with a wide variety of techniques, such as poking holes in layered newspaper, throwing bottles of paint at canvases, experimenting with film and stage performances, and composing sound art. He was particularly noted for his innovative performance art. Indeed, when Yoshihara turned t...
Go to Profile#11195
Wolfgang Männel
#41650
Overall Influence
1937 - 2006 (69 years)
Wolfgang Männel was an influential German professor of Business Administration. Academic contributions Männel was born as the son of the German entrepreneur Max Rudolf Männel and his wife Liska. He graduated at the University of Mannheim. In 1972 Männel became professor of Business Administration at the University of Frankfurt, in 1973 at the University of Dortmund and in 1982 at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Go to Profile#11196
Cynthia Bailey Lee
#175635
Overall Influence
Cynthia Bailey Lee is a lecturer in Computer Science at Stanford University from Palo Alto, California. Her research interests are in computer science pedagogy and the flipped classroom approach. She has advocated for the greater inclusion of women and minorities in computer science, and is known for her "ladysplaining" article addressing the author of the controversial Google memo.
Go to Profile#11197
Andrew Fitzgibbon
#156553
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Andrew Fitzgibbon FREng is an Irish researcher in computer vision. Since 2022, he has worked at Graphcore. Education Fitzgibbon went to school at Coláiste Chríost Rí in Cork, and then studied Computer Science and Mathematics at University College, Cork, graduating in 1989. He pursued a one-year Masters' in Knowledge-based Systems at Heriot-Watt University. Rather than start a PhD, he began work as a research assistant at the Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh, writing computer programs for 3D shape modelling and 3D scanning. In 1992 he registered for a part-tim...
Go to Profile#11198
Mike Papazoglou
#175208
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Michael Papazoglou is a Greek/Australian emeritus professor, computer science researcher and author known for his contributions to 'Service-Oriented Computing'. His main research interests include Distributed computing, Database#Database management system, Big data, Service , Domain-specific language and Cloud computing. In more recent years he shifted his focus to pursuing Emerging technologies, Industrial engineering, Smart Applications and Smart Technology Solutions for Healthcare and Manufacturing.
Go to Profile#11199
Allen Bartholomew
#112767
Overall Influence
1925 - 2004 (79 years)
Allen Austin Bartholomew was an Australian forensic psychologist and criminologist who played a major role in developing criminology in Australia. Career Bartholomew negotiated with the University of Melbourne to establish both the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology and its official journal, the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, in 1967. He went on to serve as the journal's first editor-in-chief from 1968 to 1980.
Go to Profile#11200
Hiroshi Morita
#178770
Overall Influence
