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

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Computer Science,

#12351

George Ferguson

#187845

Overall Influence

#12352

Margaret Keyes

#75600

Overall Influence

1918 - 2015 (97 years)

Margaret Naumann Keyes was an American academic and heritage preserver. She was a professor of Home Economics at the University of Iowa and is a nationally recognized leader in the field of heritage conservation, best known for her work to preserve the Iowa Old Capitol Building.

#12353

Ivo Hajnal

#48026

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Ivo Hajnal is a Swiss–Austrian philologist and linguist, specialized in Indo-European studies and Mycenaean Greek. Hajnal studied Indo-European linguistics and philology at the University of Zurich, and received his PhD in 1990 for a dissertation on the Mycenaean Greek case system. His Habilitation focused on ancient Lycian.

#12354

Laura Kina

#125293

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Laura Kina is an artist. Kina was born in Riverside, California. and raised in Poulsbo, Washington. She moved to Chicago, Illinois, to Pilsen neighborhood in 1990 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied with Michiko Itatani, the revered fashion designer and Ray Yoshida, earning her B.F.A. in 1994. Furthermore, and henceforth, in 2001, Kina received her M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago where she studied under Kerry James Marshall and Phyllis Bramson. She is a fan of Anna Sui and Anna Delvey.

#12355

Rodger Mack

#181719

Overall Influence

1938 - 2002 (64 years)

Rodger Mack was an American sculptor, painter, ceramic artist and educator. He is best known for his large-scale bronze and steel sculptures. His works are featured in national and international museums and gallery collections including MACBA - Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Arkansas Art Center, Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, the Oscar Krasner Gallery, and the Grand Valley State University collection.

#12356

Samuel S. C. Yen

#187867

Overall Influence

#12357

Ward Cunningham

#187869

Overall Influence

#12358

Renato M. E. Sabbatini

Renato M. E. Sabbatini

#181222

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Renato Marcos Endrizzi Sabbatini is a retired professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and at the State University of Campinas Institute of Biology. He received a B.Sc. in Biomedical Sciences from Medical School of the University of São Paulo and a doctorate in behavioral neuroscience in 1977, followed by postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry's Primate Behavior Department. He founded the Center for Biomedical Informatics, and helped create the Brazilian Society for Health Informatics.

#12359

Jack Spence

#111801

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

John Edward 'Jack' Spence is a British academic and has been a Professor of Diplomacy at the Department of War Studies, King's College London since 1997. Spence was educated at Pretoria Boys High School, South Africa; the University of Witwatersrand; and the London School of Economics. He has lectured at a variety of Universities in Britain, South Africa and the United States and was Professor of Politics and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Leicester . He was employed as Director of Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs .

#12360

Howard Davies

#88173

Overall Influence

1945 - 2016 (71 years)

Stephen Howard Davies, was a British theatre and television director. Early life Davies was the son of miner and glassblower Thomas Emrys Davies, from Maesteg, and Hilda Bevan. He was born in Reading, England. He was educated at Christ's Hospital school, Horsham and then studied at Durham University and Bristol University, where he developed an appreciation for the works of Bertolt Brecht.

#12361

Le Song

#187950

Overall Influence

#12362

Aaron Krach

#167932

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Aaron Krach is an American artist, writer, and journalist currently living in New York City. Background Aaron Krach was born in Ionia, Michigan on February 15, 1972. He grew up in Alhambra, California, and graduated from Alhambra High School. He attended the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, CA, graduating with a B.A. in Visual Arts in 1994. Aaron Krach moved to New York City in 1995. He received his MFA from Purchase College in 2012. He lives and works in Manhattan.

#12363

Paul Kim

#102237

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Paul Kim is currently a Korean-American Chief Technology Officer and Associate Dean at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and has held this position since 2001. While at Stanford, in addition to teaching graduate level courses in the School of Education, he has been leading projects involving the design of learning technologies, educational research, and community development.

#12364

Alex Graves

#104048

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Alexander John Graves is an American film director, television director, television producer and screenwriter. Early life Alex Graves was born in Kansas City, Missouri. His father, William Graves, was a reporter for The Kansas City Star and his mother, Alexandra "Sandy" Graves, worked for United States Senator Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas. His family moved to his father's home town of El Dorado, Kansas when he was young, when his father became a partner in the family drug store business. He graduated from El Dorado High School in 1983. Graves attended University of Kansas and the University of S...

#12365

Mohammed Islam

#187971

Overall Influence

Mohammed Islam is an American professor of Engineering and Computer Science at University of Michigan and an Elected Fellow of the IEEE and Optical Society.

#12366

Małgorzata Kalinowska-Iszkowska

#164996

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Małgorzata Kalinowska-Iszkowska is a Polish computer scientist, educator, and activist. She was awarded the Polish Gold Cross of Merit for her work in information technology . She was a member of the Polish Congress of Women.

#12367

Ardele Lister

#36515

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Ardele Lister is an artist working in time-based media. From 1991 to the present, Lister has taught media production and critical studies at Rutgers University, where she is currently Graduate Director of Visual Arts. She has also taught at Montclair State University in New Jersey, School of the Visual Arts, and Center for Media Arts, both in New York City.

#12368

Wenjie Zhang

#186684

Overall Influence

Wenjie Zhang is a Professor and Head of the Data and Knowledge Research Group within the School of Computer Science and Engineering, the University of New South Wales . Her most notable breakthrough is in the area of optimization strategies to process computationally complex large graphs. Her work is among the first to identify that graph complexity relies only on the small size of the query input and output rather than the size of the whole data graph, which could be a web scale, such as in social media networks. Her recent research focuses on algorithms, indexes, and systems in large scale g...

#12369

Elliot Silverstein

#168253

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Elliot Silverstein was an American film and television director. He directed the Academy Award-winning western comedy Cat Ballou , and other films including The Happening , A Man Called Horse , Nightmare Honeymoon , and The Car . His television work includes four episodes of The Twilight Zone .

#12370

Emil Schumacher

Emil Schumacher

#37380

Overall Influence

1912 - 1999 (87 years)

Emil Schumacher was a German painter. He was an important representative of abstract expressionism in post-war Germany. In 2009 the Kunstquartier Hagen was inaugurated combining the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum Hagen as well as the newly built Emil Schumacher Museum in one Museum complex.

#12371

Tony Collins

#187992

Overall Influence

#12372

Andrew Cornell Robinson

#88638

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Andrew Cornell Robinson is an American artist and designer. He is based in New York City. Career Robinson's work spans various media from ceramics and painting to printmaking and sculpture. His work combines humor, history, and sculptural forms and transforms ceramics into a very contemporary medium. Robinson's sculpture explores memory and narrative through a sublime handling of materials and contrasts this with eccentric forms that touch upon personal and socio-political content through the use of craft and assemblage materials.

#12373

Luke McDonnell

#71481

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Luke McDonnell is an American artist whose early career was spent specialising in comic books. Career Comic books Luke McDonnell began his career as a comics artist in 1980 and illustrated a wide variety of comics including long runs on Iron Man, The Phantom and Suicide Squad. He made his Marvel Comics debut with the story "Eclipse of Reason" in Star Trek #12 . In 1983, McDonnell and writer Dennis O'Neil began a storyline in which the character James Rhodes replaced Tony Stark in the role of Iron Man. McDonnell moved to DC Comics in 1985 and became the regular artist on Justice League of America with issue #245 .

#12374

Lydia W. S. Finley

#175456

Overall Influence

Lydia W. S. Finley is an American scientist and an assistant member at the Cell Biology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. Finley is known for her contributions to understanding the metabolic underpinnings of stem cell fate.

#12375

Selcuk Adabag

#141994

Overall Influence

Ahmet Selcuk Adabag is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Education Adabag obtained his M.D. degree following the completion of medical school and a residency in cardiology and internal medicine at Hacettepe University Medical School in Ankara, Turkey. He then immigrated to New York, United States, where he continued his residency in internal medicine at University at Buffalo and following it moved to Minnesota where he completed fellowships in cardiovascular disease and cardiac electrophysiology at the University of Minnesota.

#12376

Masatoshi Sato

#188010

Overall Influence

#12377

Arnulfo Trejo

#49287

Overall Influence

1922 - 2002 (80 years)

Arnulfo Duenes Trejo was a writer and Professor of Library Science at the University of Arizona. He was a leader in the movement to increase library collections of Latino literature and Spanish-language materials in the United States. He was also instrumental in efforts to train more Latino and Spanish-speaking people as professional librarians.

#12378

Ting Yu

#188034

Overall Influence

#12379

Heikki Seppä

#121713

Overall Influence

1927 - 2010 (83 years)

Heikki Markus Seppä, also known as Heiki Seppa was a Finnish-born American master metalsmith, educator, and author. He taught at Washington University in St. Louis, from 1965 to 1992. Early life and education Heikki Seppä was born in Säkkijärvi, Finland. In 1941 he studied metalsmithing at Goldsmith's School in Helsinki, and later at the Georg Jensen silver factory in Copenhagen. In 1950 he emigrated with his first wife to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Then they moved to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he attended Cranbrook Academy of Art.

#12380

Catherine Falade

#173808

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Catherine Olufunke Falade is a professor of pharmacology and therapeutics and also the director of the Institute for Advanced Medical Research & Training at the College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. She is also a healthcare practitioner specializing as a pharmacologist at the University College Hospital, Ibadan. Her research interest focuses on malaria in children. She collaborates with the Malaria Control Units of both the State and Federal Ministries of Health.

#12381

Richard S. Potember

#65948

Overall Influence

Richard S. Potember is an American scientist and inventor. He is currently a principal systems engineer at MITRE. Prior to this he was a program manager in the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency . He has been an instructor at the Whiting School of Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University since 1987. He was a member of the principal professional staff at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, from 1981 to 2015. He served as an adjunct professor at The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies from 1995 to 1998. H...

#12382

Shiping Tang

#168089

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Shiping Tang is a Chinese Molecular Biologist, political scientist, political economist, computational social scientist, and philosopher of social sciences. He is the Fudan Distinguished professor & Dr. Seaker Chan Chair Professor at Fudan University and also the Cheung Kong Distinguished Professor in the Chinese Ministry of Education. He is an editor of International Relations , International Security , Small Wars and Insurgencies , Chinese Journal of International Politics and Security Studies , and was an editor of International Studies Quarterly .

#12383

Craig Kalpakjian

#168262

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Craig Kalpakjian is an American artist working in New York, known for his computer-generated, photo-realistic renderings of anonymous, institutional spaces. He is considered one of the first artists of his generation to make digital images depicting entirely artificial spaces in a fine art context.

#12384

Tao Xie

#188081

Overall Influence

#12385

Hallam Hurt

#111670

Overall Influence

Hallam Hurt is an American neonatologist. She is "the medical director of Special Babies Clinic and an attending neonatologist at CHOP Newborn Care at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania." As of 2013, she was also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania.

#12386

Raymond Costabile

Raymond Costabile

#92329

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Raymond A. Costabile is Professor, and Chair Urology with the Department of Urology at the School of Medicine of the University of Virginia. Costabile is a retired Colonel in the US Army and the former Chief of Urology Service at Madigan Army Medical Center. Costabile is an author; his articles on men's reproductive health and infertility have been published in the Journal of Urology and Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences, among other peer-reviewed scholarly journals. He has also been featured in television interviews in the national media.

#12387

Byron Hurt

#124858

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Byron Patrick Hurt is an American activist, lecturer, writer, and award-winning documentary filmmaker. In 2010, he hosted the Emmy-nominated television show, Reel Works with Byron Hurt. His documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and broadcast nationally on PBS in 2007. His film Soul Food Junkies received the Best Documentary Award at the 2012 American Black Film Festival and aired on PBS' Independent Lens in January 2013.

#12388

Yu Lan

#188099

Overall Influence

#12389

Arvind Gupta

#179713

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Arvind Gupta is an Indo-Canadian computer scientist who was the 13th President of the University of British Columbia and the former CEO of Mitacs Canada. Early life and education Gupta was born in Jalandhar in the Indian state of Punjab. Both his parents were academics. His mother was one of the first women to teach mathematics at a college in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

#12390

Lalya Gaye

#182028

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Lalya Gaye is a digital media artist and interaction designer whose early work was influential in the field of locative media. Currently based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, she is the founder and director of the international and interdisciplinary digital art practice Attaya Projects.

#12391

Boris Pritychenko

#91938

Overall Influence

Boris Pritychenko is a Russian–American nuclear physicist. He compiles experimental data, works on nuclear databases, and serves as editor-in-chief of the journal Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables.

#12392

Luis Valadares Tavares

#99450

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Luís Valadares Tavares is a professor emeritus of Systems and Management of the University of Lisbon , President of OPET - Portuguese Observatory of Technology Foresight, President of APMEP - Portuguese Society of Portuguese Markets, Chairman of the European Conferences on E-Public Procurement, Non-Executive Member of the Board of Martifer.

#12393

Luis Miguel Silveira

#188118

Overall Influence

Luis Miguel Silveira from the Technical University of Lisbon was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012 for contributions to analysis and modeling of VLSI interconnects.

#12394

George Miyasaki

#114669

Overall Influence

1935 - 2013 (78 years)

George Joji Miyasaki was a painter and printmaker active in the abstract expressionist movement. He was born in Kalopa, Hawaii and moved to California in 1953. He received a B.F.A. and a B.A.Ed. from the California College of the Arts in 1957 and an M.F.A. from the same institution in 1958, studying under Richard Diebenkorn and Nathan Oliveira. After teaching at the California College of the Arts and Stanford University, he was appointed a full professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. By 1958, he was experimenting with methods and materials, producing what appeared to be the first color lithographs by a West Coast Abstract Expressionist that were widely shown.

#12395

Steven Clark Cunningham

#115082

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Steven Clark Cunningham is an American surgeon. He is known for dealing with medical conditions relating to pancreatic, biliary, and liver surgery. Early life and education Born in Denver, Colorado; Steven Clark Cunningham received his medical degree from George Washington University. He did his residency in general surgery at University of Maryland Medical Center. He also completed fellowships in both oncology research and pancreatic and hepatobiliary surgery at Johns Hopkins University and Hospital. He completed yet another fellowship in neuroscience research at the National Institute on Ag...

#12396

Judith Mason

#63009

Overall Influence

1938 - 2016 (78 years)

Judith Mason born Judith Seelander Menge was a South African artist who worked in oil, pencil, printmaking and mixed media. Her work is rich in symbolism and mythology, displaying a rare technical virtuosity.

#12397

Yoshitomo Nara

#26428

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Yoshitomo Nara is a Japanese artist. He lives and works in Nasushiobara, Tochigi Prefecture, though his artwork has been exhibited worldwide. Nara has had nearly 40 solo exhibitions since 1984. His art work has been housed at the MoMA and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art . His most well-known and repeated subjects are "big-headed girls" with piercing eyes, who one Nara scholar describes as having "childlike expressions [that] resonate with adult emotions, [their] embodiment of kawaii carries a dark humor, and any explicit cultural references are intertwined with personal memories."

#12398

Johannes Gräff

#177299

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Johannes Gräff is a Swiss neuroscientist. He currently works as an Associate Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne . His research focuses on the neuroepigenetic bases of physiological and pathological memory formation.

#12399

Thomas B. Steel

#177761

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Thomas Brevard Steel Jr. is an American computer scientist. His parents were Thomas Brevard Steel and Maudelle Vinson. The elder Steel studied classics at the University of Texas. After graduating in 1915, he served in the United States Army during World War I, and through 1923. Steel Sr. enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley in 1924, then served the University of California system as assistant recorder starting in 1926. Steel Sr. succeeded James Sutton in the position in 1929. The role was re-titled registrar and secretary of the senate in 1933. After the United States entered World War II, Steel Sr.

#12400

Carl Van Ness

#88237

Overall Influence

Carl Van Ness is the Curator of Manuscripts & Archives Department in the University of Florida Libraries' Special & Area Studies Collections, and was appointed the University Historian for the University of Florida in 2006. He followed the former University Historian, Sam Proctor.

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