Search People Result | Academic Influence

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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Person Name

School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Computer Science,

#11501

Nasir Ahmed

#181562

Overall Influence

#11502

Beth Rogers

#86003

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Beth Rogers was Head of the Marketing and Sales academic community at the University of Portsmouth Business School . She pioneered professional selling and sales management curricula for postgraduates, undergraduates and work-based learners at University of Portsmouth Business School. Portsmouth was the first UK business school listed as a "Top Sales School" by the University Sales Education Foundation. Dr Rogers chaired the steering group which launched National Occupational Standards for Sales in the UK and was also a member of the Learning Advisory Group of the Chartered Institute of Marketing .

#11503

Mohammed-Sani Abdulai

Mohammed-Sani Abdulai

#66551

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Mohammed-Sani Abdulai is a Ghanaian educator and IT professional. He is currently the president of Lakeside University College. Early life Abdulai was born on 2 May 1956 in Yendi in the Northern region of Ghana. His father Abdulai Adam was a vulcanizer in Tamale and his mother Martha Sandow was a petty trader.

#11504

Chris Oliver

#78581

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Chris Oliver was an Edinburgh orthopaedic surgeon and professor and was the King James IV Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh 2019-20. Associate Research Fellow at the School of Engineering and Built Environment, Transport Research Institute, Edinburgh Napier University 2018-21. Honorary Professor in Physical Activity for Health at the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre, University of Edinburgh 2015-18. Consultant trauma orthopaedic and hand surgeon at Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh 1997-17.

#11505

Jack C. Hayya

#97468

Overall Influence

1929 - 2018 (89 years)

Jack C. Hayya was professor emeritus of management science at the Pennsylvania State University. Education B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, 1952M.S., Management, California State University, Northridge, 1961Ph.D., Business Administration, University of California, Los Angeles, 1966

#11506

Kazem Sadegh-Zadeh

#87759

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Kazem Sadegh-Zadeh was a German analytic philosopher of medicine of Iranian descent. He was the first ever professor of philosophy of medicine at a German university and has made significant contributions to the philosophy, methodology, and logic of medicine since 1970.

#11507

Masaru Tomita

#181607

Overall Influence

#11508

Kay WalkingStick

#94961

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Kay WalkingStick is a Native American landscape artist and a member of the Cherokee Nation. Her later landscape paintings, executed in oil paint on wood panels often include patterns based on Southwest American Indian rugs, pottery, and other artworks.

#11509

Mark T. Smith

#83348

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Mark T. Smith is an Americann painter. Life and career Born in Wilmington, Delaware, where he attended Archmere Academy, Smith moved to New York City in 1986 to study at the Pratt Institute. After graduating from Pratt, he made New York City his home until June 2004, before relocating to Miami for 14 years, Oahu, Hawaii, for a year, and then eventually settling in Seattle, WA in 2018.

#11510

Christopher Weaver

#114300

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Christopher S. Weaver is an American entrepreneur, software developer, scientist, author, and educator. He is known for founding Bethesda Softworks, where he was one of the creators of The Elder Scrolls role-playing series.

#11511

Wenjie Zhang

#181662

Overall Influence

#11512

Sam Wood

#43028

Overall Influence

Sam Wood is an artist whose work has appeared in role-playing games. Works Sam Wood did his first work for Wizards of the Coast in 1995, and later became a staff illustrator. Wood's earliest work in the game industry was for the BattleTech TCG, and he went on to work on games like Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Alternity, Doomtown, Legend of the Five Rings, and Chainmail. He collaborated with Todd Lockwood on D&D and concept work on many of the Chainmail miniatures.

#11513

Erik Larsson

#181664

Overall Influence

#11514

Dave McKean

#109700

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

David McKean is an English artist. His work incorporates drawing, painting, photography, collage, found objects, digital art, and sculpture. McKean has illustrated work by authors such as Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Heston Blumenthal, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King. He has also directed three feature films.

#11515

Jaime Gómez-Hernández

#141086

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

J. Jaime Gómez-Hernández is a Spanish civil engineer specialized in geostatistics and hydrogeology. He is a full professor of hydraulic engineering at the School of Civil Engineering of the Technical University of Valencia. He was conferred the William Christian Krumbein Medal in 2020 from the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences. He also received the 2020 Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water in the field of groundwater.

#11516

Syed Nazim Ali

#149405

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Syed Nazim Ali is currently a Research Professor and Director, Research Division at the College of Islamic Studies, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar Foundation. He is one of the founders of the Harvard Islamic Finance Program and was associated with it from 1995 to 2014. During his association with Harvard he worked on several initiatives including Harvard University Forum on Islamic Finance which is continued by Harvard Muslim Alumni Association. He also initiated the annual joint workshop in London with the London School of Economics in 2007 and now continued at SOAS-University of Londo...

#11517

Kevin A. Ryan

#102633

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Kevin Albert Ryan is the founder and director emeritus of the Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character at Boston University. Career As a naval officer, Ryan attended Instructors School and taught. When he left active duty, he entered Columbia University, obtained a master's degree in the teaching of English and taught this subject at Suffern High School, Suffern, New York, for four years. It was toward the end of this period that he met his future wife, Marilyn Snydar, an English teacher from a nearby school.

#11518

Sherwin J Singer

#181690

Overall Influence

#11519

Jo Ann Callis

#99307

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Jo Ann Callis is an American artist who works with photography and is based in California. Her work is held in various public collections. Life and work Callis was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Though she initially pursued a degree at Ohio State University in 1958, she dropped out in her second year when she got married. She and her husband moved to Southern California in 1961. Her father died after the birth of her first son, Stephen, in the same year. In 1963, her second son Michael was born. Callis enrolled at University of California, Los Angeles in 1970 initially in graphic design. When sh...

#11520

Gaurang Yodh

#129105

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

Gaurang Yodh was an Indian-American physicist and an expert in astroparticle physics and cosmic-ray physics. He earned his B.Sc. at the University of Bombay in 1948 and his Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago in 1955. During his career, he held appointments at Stanford University, Carnegie-Mellon University, and the University of Maryland, before joining the faculty at the University of California, Irvine in 1988. Yodh was a Fellow of the American Physical Society and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#11521

Satoshi Yasuda

#181726

Overall Influence

#11522

Mark Wilson

#58447

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

James "Mark" Wilson was an American magician and author, who was widely credited as the first major television magician and in the process establishing the viability of illusion shows as a television format.

#11523

Michael J. Levy

#181762

Overall Influence

#11524

Laughlin Phillips

Laughlin Phillips

#73157

Overall Influence

1924 - 2010 (86 years)

Laughlin Phillips , also known as Loc Phillips, was an American museum director from Washington, D.C. The son of wealthy art collectors, he managed The Phillips Collection, a museum founded by his parents. Under his leadership, the museum increased its collection, underwent expansion projects and received substantial financial support. Prior to his career as a museum director, Phillips served during World War II, worked as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency and co-founded a local magazine.

#11525

Qiang Gao

#181769

Overall Influence

#11526

Joe Andrew

#113593

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Joe Andrew is a British academic whose main research interests are 19th-century Russian literature, feminist approaches to literature, and women writers. Andrew is Professor of Russian Literature at Keele University. His publishing history includes 24 books , 61 articles , 57 translations, and 58 reviews.

#11527

Andreas Scholl

#181783

Overall Influence

#11528

Wenjun Zeng

#107517

Overall Influence

Wenjun Zeng, previously with the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012 "for contributions to multimedia communication and security".

#11529

Alexander Gorlov

#70566

Overall Influence

1931 - 2016 (85 years)

Alexander M. Gorlov was a Russian mechanical engineer who was Professor Emeritus and Director of Hydro-Pneumatic Power Laboratory at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Early life Alexander M. Gorlov was born into the family of a prosperous lawyer. His father was arrested and died in prison during Joseph Stalin's purges. His mother also spent a number of years in concentration camps in Russia, which forced young Alexander Gorlov to spend some of his childhood years in the orphanage in a remote Russian Urals area.

#11530

Liz Lightstone

#172735

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Elizabeth Beatrice Lightstone is a British physician and consultant who is a Professor of Nephrology at Imperial College London. Her research investigates disease in kidneys such as lupus nephritis, glomerular disease and chronic kidney disease . Lighthouse has also investigated healthcare inequalities.

#11531

Gabriella Gobbi

#174609

Overall Influence

Gabriella Gobbi is an Italo-Canadian psychiatrist and neuroscientist whose research explores novel treatments for mental health disorders. Gobbi is a professor at McGill University's Department of Psychiatry and a Canada Research Chair in Therapeutics for Mental Health.

#11532

George Cohen

#97273

Overall Influence

1919 - 1999 (80 years)

George Marshall Cohen was an American painter and art professor. He was a member of the Chicago-based Monster Roster group of artists and taught art at Northwestern University. Early life and education Cohen was born on August 4, 1919, in Chicago. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was awarded the Isaacs Scholarship in 1938–1939 and the Coolbaugh Scholarship in 1939–1940. He also served as the President of the Art Students League of New York in 1940.

#11533

Roger Michell

#57543

Overall Influence

1956 - 2021 (65 years)

Roger Michell was a South African-born British theatre, television and film director. He was best known for directing films such as Notting Hill and Venus, as well as the 1995 made-for-television film Persuasion.

#11534

Fernando de Szyszlo

Fernando de Szyszlo

#11964

Overall Influence

1924 - 2017 (93 years)

Fernando de Szyszlo Valdelomar was a Peruvian painter, sculptor, printmaker, and teacher who was a key figure in advancing abstract art in Latin America since the mid-1950s, and one of the leading plastic artists in Peru.

#11535

Sanjeev Gupta

#181846

Overall Influence

#11536

Richard Vernon

#101306

Overall Influence

1925 - 1997 (72 years)

Richard Evelyn Vernon was a British actor. He appeared in many feature films and television programmes, often in aristocratic or supercilious roles. Prematurely balding and greying, Vernon settled into playing archetypal middle-aged lords and military types while still in his 30s. He is perhaps best known for originating the role of Slartibartfast in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Other notable roles included the lead role of Edwin Oldenshaw in The Man in Room 17 , Sir James Greenley alias "C" in The Sandbaggers , and Sir Desmond Glazebrook in Yes Minister and its sequel series Yes, P...

#11537

Christopher Brown

#79859

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Christopher Brown , is an American artist and educator. He is known for his paintings and prints, often figurative and feature abstract settings with repeating patterns or shapes. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1981 to 1994. Brown has also worked as an adjunct professor at the California College of the Arts. Brown's work is associated with Neo‐expressionism.

#11538

Joel Lamangan

#79656

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Joel Lamangan is a Filipino film director, television director and actor. His award-winning films includes The Flor Contemplacion Story, Sidhi, Deathrow, Hubog, Aishte Imasu 1941, Blue Moon and Mano Po.

#11539

Alistair Forrest

#181862

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Alistair Forrest is an Australian molecular biologist who uses bioinformatics and DNA sequencing to study transcriptional regulation in mammals. He is based in Yokohama, Japan and is head of the Genome Information Analysis Team. He is also a co-author of over 50 peer-reviewed articles with The Transcriptional Landscape of the Mammalian Genome one being cited over 1,000 times and brings him an h-index of 31.

#11540

Claire Greenhill

#111612

Overall Influence

Claire Greenhill is a British zoologist and the chief editor of Nature Reviews Endocrinology. Education Greenhill has a bachelor's degree in zoology from Durham University, and a master's degree in conservation biology from the University of Kent.

#11541

Justin Hall

#126888

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Justin Robinson Hall is an American cartoonist and educator. He has written and illustrated autobiographical and erotic comics, and edited No Straight Lines, a scholarly overview of LGBT comics of the previous 40 years. He is an Associate Professor of Comics and Writing-and-Literature at the California College of the Arts.

#11542

Tamara Doering

#177988

Overall Influence

Tamara Lea Doering is an American microbiologist known for her research in Cryptococcus neoformans, a pathogenic fungus. She is currently a professor of molecular microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine.

#11543

Axel Behrens

#177760

Overall Influence

Axel Behrens is a German-British molecular biologist and an expert in cancer stem cell biology. He is the Scientific Director of the Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre in London, a senior group leader at the Institute of Cancer Research and a professor at Imperial College London.

#11544

Maia Vergniory

#178390

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Maia Garcia Vergniory is a Spanish computational physicist who is a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids. Her work in topological quantum chemistry investigates the phases of topological materials. She was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022.

#11545

Paramasivam Natarajan

#23057

Overall Influence

1940 - 2016 (76 years)

Paramasivam Natarajan was an Indian photochemist, the INSA Senior Scientist at the National Centre for Ultrafast Process of the University of Madras and the director of Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. He was known for his researches on photochemistry of co-ordination compounds and macromolecular dye coatings for stabilization of electrodes and was an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific an...

#11546

Reginald F. Frye

#181935

Overall Influence

#11547

Sanjay Chaudhary

#178161

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Sanjay Raghuveer Chaudhary is an Indian writer, professor, and computer scientist from Gujarat, India. He is a professor of computer science at Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad. He has authored several books in Gujarati and English. His literary work Girnar received Gujarat Sahitya Akademi's Best Book Prize in Essays and Travelogue category. He has published and edited several books on computer science. He is a senior member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers .

#11548

Kate Larson

#180620

Overall Influence

Kate S. Larson is a Canadian computer scientist working as a professor, Pasupalak AI Fellow, and University Research Chair in the Cheriton School of Computer Science of the University of Waterloo. Education Larson majored in mathematics at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics 1997. After earning a master's degree in computer science at Washington University in St. Louis in 1999, she completed a Ph.D. in computer science in 2004 at Carnegie Mellon University. Her dissertation, Mechanism Design for Computationally Limited A...

#11549

Shaoshan Liu

#177993

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Shaoshan Liu is a US-based computer scientist, who is also the founder, chairman and CEO of PerceptIn. Presently, he is a senior member of IEEE, a member of ACM and a member of the editorial board of IT Professional. Additionally, he is the vice chair of IEEE Computer Society's Special Technical Community on Autonomous Driving Technologies.

#11550

James Hill

#117687

Overall Influence

1919 - 1994 (75 years)

James Hill was a British film and television director, screenwriter and producer whose career spanned 52 years between 1937 and 1989, best remembered for his documentaries and short subjects such as Giuseppina and The Home-Made Car, and as director of the internationally acclaimed Born Free.

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