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,
#13201
Mark Thompson
#188134
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Sir Mark John Thompson is a British media executive who is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ancestry, the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, and Chief Executive Officer of the Cable News Network . He is the former president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company. From 2004 to 2012, he served as Director-General of the BBC, and before that was the Chief Executive of Channel 4. In 2009 Thompson was ranked as the 65th most powerful person in the world by Forbes magazine. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017.
Go to Profile#13202
Robin R. Means Coleman
#191380
Overall Influence
Dr. Robin Means Coleman is Northwestern’s vice president and associate provost for diversity and inclusion, chief diversity officer, and the Ida B. Wells and Ferdinand Barnett Professor in the Department of Communication Studies. She holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Radio/Television/Film and in the Department of African American Studies in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Prior to Joining Northwestern, Dr. Coleman served as vice president & associate provost for diversity and professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. There she implemented the University Diversity Plan, thereby leading efforts in accountability, climate, and equity.
Go to Profile#13203
C. Nataraj
#174285
Overall Influence
Chandrashekar Nataraj , an American-Indian scientist, holds the Mr. and Mrs. Robert F. Moritz, Sr. Endowed Chair in Engineered Systems in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Villanova University:.
Go to Profile#13204
Michael James
#102070
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Michael Francis James is an American artist, educator, author, and lecturer. He is best known as a leader of the art quilt movement that began in the 1970s. He currently lives and maintains a studio in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Go to Profile#13205
Tan Chung
#100014
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Tan Chung is an authority on Chinese history, Sino-Indian relations and cultural exchange. He has been a doyen of Chinese cultural studies in India for nearly half a century. Early life After initial education in China came to Santiniketan in 1955. On completing his Ph D from Visva Bharati University, taught in NDA, Khadakvasla, then joined Delhi University as professor of Chinese and became head of the department of Chinese and Japanese studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. His wife, Huang I-Shu, taught Chinese at Delhi University.
Go to Profile#13206
Zhendong Zhang
#182790
Overall Influence
1992 - Present (34 years)
Zhen Dong Zhang, native form as Zhang Zhen Dong is a Chinese racing driver currently competing in the TCR International Series and China Touring Car Championship. Having previously competed in the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia, Formula Masters China and Asian Formula Renault Challenge amongst others.
Go to Profile#13207
Sara Kathryn Arledge
#179280
Overall Influence
1911 - 1998 (87 years)
Sara Kathryn Arledge was an American artist and filmmaker acknowledged as "one of the foremothers of the American experimental cinema." Early life and education Born in Mojave, California, Arledge received a Bachelor of Education in Art from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1936. She also attended Columbia University and studied painting at The Barnes Foundation. She taught at the Department of Art at the University of Oklahoma from 1943 to 1944, and at the University of Arizona, Tucson from 1945 to 1946.
Go to Profile#13208
William G. Harless
#142808
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
William G. Harless was an educational theorist. He held a Ph.D. degree in psychology and learning theory and was co-founder, President and CEO of Interactive Drama Inc. . He held a faculty position at the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities, where accredited doctorate degrees are awarded from a multidisciplinary, experientially based curriculum.
Go to Profile#13209
Nikolay Rogalev
#64503
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Nikolay Dmirtievich Rogalev is a Russian scientist and energetics researcher. Rector of Moscow Power Engineering Institute since 2013. Biography Nikolay Dmirtievich Rogalev was born on 17 February 1962 in Urusu village, Tatar ASSR. In 1985 he graduated from Heat and Power Faculty of Moscow Power Engineering Institute. In 1988 he defended his candidate thesis, and in 1998 - his doctoral thesis on the topic "Ecological technologies in heat power engineering". He then trained at Institute of Innovation, Creativity and Capital of the University of Texas at Austin in 1996 and was as a visiting s...
Go to Profile#13210
David S. Ahn
#169071
Overall Influence
David S. Ahn is an economist and professor at the Olin Business School of Washington University in St. Louis. Ahn works particularly in economic theory and mathematical economics. Ahn is an associate editor with Theoretical Economics. From 2013 to 2019, Ahn was an associate editor with the Journal of Economic Theory.
Go to Profile#13212
Ulrike Rosenbach
#49884
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Ulrike Rose Bach is a video artist from Germany. Rose Bach works with videotapes, installations and performances. She was one of the first artists from Germany to use video for experiments with electronic images. Her videotapes critique the traditional representation of women and help formulate the identity of women from a feminist perspective.
Go to Profile#13213
Hideyuki Arata
#75523
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
is a Japanese engineering scientist. Contribution Arata substantially contributed to develop a new interdisciplinary field by harmonizing molecular biology, analytical chemistry, biophysics and plant/agricultural sciences, with microengineering and nanoscience. He is the inventor of free rotation magnetic tweezers and is the first to observe a DNA twist by a single biomolecule by FRMT. He actively giving lectures at universities and research institutes worldwide, such as École Normale Supérieure , University of Tokyo, Peking University, ETH Zurich, Stanford University, Harvard University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Go to Profile#13214
Judith Barringer
#167276
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Judith Barringer is an American classical archaeologist and Professor of Greek Art and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. She studies the archaeology, art and culture of ancient Greece from the Archaic to Hellenistic periods.
Go to Profile#13215
Derek Hill
#55432
Overall Influence
1916 - 2000 (84 years)
Arthur Derek Hill, , was an English portrait and landscape painter and a longtime resident of Ireland. Life and work Early life Hill was born at Southampton, in Hampshire, the son of a wealthy sugar trader.
Go to Profile#13216
Elana Herzog
#185459
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Elana Herzog is an American installation artist and sculptor based in New York City. She is most known for abstract, tactile works in which she disassembles, reconfigures and embeds second-hand textiles in walls, modular panels and architectural spaces with industrial-grade metal staples. Herzog has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Award and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, among others. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Arts and Design , Tang Museum, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Sharjah Art Museu...
Go to Profile#13217
Dugald Cameron
#130534
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Dugald Cameron, OBE, FCSD, FRSA is a Scottish artist and industrial designer. Cameron was born in Glasgow in 1939 and raised near Clydebank, attending the High School of Glasgow. He obtained both a DA and a Postgraduate Diploma from Glasgow School of Art. He subsequently worked as a freelance industrial designer, during which time he designed a prototype medical ultrasound machine, the Lund machine , and the production version, the Diasonograph, working with medical physicist Tom Brown.
Go to Profile#13218
Anne-Christine Hladky
#167854
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Anne-Christine Hladky-Hennion is a French researcher in acoustic metamaterials. She is a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research , and scientific deputy director of the CNRS .
Go to Profile#13219
James D. Wallace
#18355
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
James Donald Wallace was an American philosopher. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for 49 years. Biography Wallace was born in Troy, New York, on May 21, 1937.
Go to Profile#13220
Yue Cao
#191441
Overall Influence
#13221
Roger E. Nebergall
#141808
Overall Influence
1926 - 1994 (68 years)
Roger E. Nebergall was an American speech professor at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Early life and education Roger E. Nebergall was born on July 3, 1926, in Davenport, Iowa. He served in the United States Navy during World War II.
Go to Profile#13222
Henry Antwi
#191446
Overall Influence
Henry Antwi is an Australian based mining engineer an mineral economist He is a fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and the founder and sponsor of the Tarkwa Student Chapter of AusIMM at the University of Mines and Technology, Ghana.
Go to Profile#13223
Martha Ásdís Hjálmarsdóttir
#120378
Overall Influence
Martha Ásdís Hjálmarsdóttir is a professor in biomedical science in the Department of Biomedical Science at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Iceland and is the head of department there.
Go to Profile#13224
Sha Aimin
#188784
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Sha Aimin is currently the President of Chang'an University, China and a professor of highway engineering. Early life Sha was born in Xuancheng, Anhui, China in 1964. He completed his Ph.D. in transportation engineering from Kharkiv National Highway Automotive Technology University, Ukraine.
Go to Profile#13225
Donald Court
#74852
Overall Influence
1912 - 1994 (82 years)
Seymour Donald Mayneord Court, CBE, FRCSLT, FRCP, Hon FRCGP was a British paediatrician who was known for his achievements in the fields of respiratory disease and the epidemiology of disease in childhood. He was also known for working, in a primary role, that established the importance of research into the social and behavioural aspects of illness in childhood.
Go to Profile#13226
Marco Breuer
#88055
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Marco Breuer is a German photographer. Much of his work is undertaken without the aid of a camera, aperture, or film, being instead produced through a combination of photogrammic, abrasive, and incisive techniques.
Go to Profile#13227
Gilles Brassard
#191455
Overall Influence
#13228
Anna-Lind Pétursdóttir
#186718
Overall Influence
Anna-Lind Pétursdóttir is an Icelandic Professor of Psychology, Special Education and Behaviour Analysis in the School of Education at the University of Iceland. Professional career Anna-Lind completed a matriculation examination from Akureyri Junior College in 1991, BA degree in psychology from the University of Iceland in 1996, Cand. Psych. degree in School Psychology in 2001 and a Dr. Phil. degree in Special Education from the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota in 2006. She received grants from Fulbright and the Val Bjornson Fund to pursue doctoral st...
Go to Profile#13229
Dennis Smith
#78220
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Dennis Von Smith is an American sculptor. He is a Latter-day Saint and some of his artwork deals with LDS themes. He is most noted in LDS circles for having created most of the statues that form the Monument to Women Memorial Garden in Nauvoo, Illinois.
Go to Profile#13230
Vincent Shen
#75442
Overall Influence
1949 - 2018 (69 years)
Vincent Shen was a philosopher known for his work in Chinese philosophy and in the comparative dialogue between Western and Chinese thought. Biography Born in Taiwan in 1949, Shen completed his undergraduate studies at Fu Jen Catholic University and his PhD at the University of Louvain in 1980 on the philosophies of Maurice Blondel and Alfred North Whitehead, before returning to Taiwan to teach philosophy at the National Chengchi University in Taipei for twenty years. He moved to Canada in 2000, where he held the Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture at the University of Toronto, a post s...
Go to Profile#13231
Wulf Barsch
#138526
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Wulf Erich Barsch von Benedikt is an American Latter-day Saint artist and professor at Brigham Young University . Life Barsch was born in Reudnitz. While his full name is Wulf Erich Barsch von Benedikt, he uses Wulf Barsch as his professional name.
Go to Profile#13232
Franz M. Johansen
#117266
Overall Influence
1928 - 2018 (90 years)
Franz Mark Johansen was a Latter-day Saint sculptor and an emeritus professor at Brigham Young University . He has been called the founder of the LDS contemporary art movement that expresses spiritual belief through the human form.
Go to Profile#13233
Lindsey Blake Churchill
#191462
Overall Influence
#13234
Soren Edsberg
#170077
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Soren Edsberg was a Danish-born American painter. His work has been highly praised by Alexandre Cirici Pellicer. He was the son of Knud Edsberg who was also a painter. First Knud and then Soren joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1961.
Go to Profile#13235
D. J. M. Mackenzie
#97872
Overall Influence
1905 - 1994 (89 years)
David James Masterton Mackenzie was a British colonial medical official. From January 1958 to September 1963, he was Director of Medical and Health Services of Hong Kong, being the last non-Chinese person to hold that post, and an official member of the Legislative Council.
Go to Profile#13236
Walter Hamady
#107173
Overall Influence
1940 - 2019 (79 years)
Walter Samuel Haatoum Hamady was an American artist, book designer, papermaker, poet and teacher. He is especially known for his innovative efforts in letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking. In the mid-1960s, he founded The Perishable Press Limited and the Shadwell Papermill, and soon after joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught for more than thirty years.
Go to Profile#13237
Celeste Sánchez Romero
#179796
Overall Influence
1990 - 2022 (32 years)
Celeste Sánchez Romero was a Mexican dental researcher and federal deputy from the Labor Party in the first six months of the LXV Legislature of the Mexican Congress. Prior to becoming a legislator, she was an academic researcher.
Go to Profile#13238
Joanna Hendon
#133604
Overall Influence
Joanna C. Hendon is an attorney with Alston & Bird in New York who specializes in white collar criminal defense, securities enforcement, and complex civil litigation. Early life Hendon received her BA from the University of British Columbia in 1987 and her JD from Yale Law School in 1991.
Go to Profile#13239
David Askevold
#73651
Overall Influence
1940 - 2008 (68 years)
David Askevold was an experimental Canadian artist who lived in Nova Scotia. Askevold studied art and anthropology at the University of Montana. In 1963, he won a Max Beckmann Scholarship to study painting for a year at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in New York. In 1966, he enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, in Sculpture. Askevold went to Halifax and joined the faculty of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1968.
Go to Profile#13240
Mai Dantsig
#88542
Overall Influence
1930 - 2017 (87 years)
Mai Volfovich Dantsig was a Belarusian artist active during the Soviet era and independence of Belarus. He is considered to have been one of the founders of the contemporary Belarusian art. Education and career Dantzig was born in Minsk, Belarus. He graduated from the Minsk Arts College in 1952 and the Surikov Arts Institute in Moscow in 1958. In Moscow he studied under Mikhail Kurilko and Victor Tsyplakov.
Go to Profile#13241
Preetha Ram
#87490
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Preetha Ram is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Inquus Corporation, also known as OpenStudy. Currently on leave, she serves as the associate dean for prehealth and science education in the office of undergraduate education at Emory University. Here, she has held multiple distinguished roles, including founder and executive director of the Emory PreHealth Mentoring Office , founding co-director of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative, and founder and director of the interdisciplinary science program for integrating science into education. During her tenure at Emory, she has founded n...
Go to Profile#13242
Robert Isaac Field
#113886
Overall Influence
Robert I. Field is a professor at Drexel University Kline School of Law. Field received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School, master's in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health, and doctorate in psychology from Boston University.
Go to Profile#13243
Johana Kotišová
#191483
Overall Influence
1989 - Present (37 years)
Johana Kotisova is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Amsterdam and was previously an Assistant Professor at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. Kotisova’s current research investigates the emotional labor required of European crisis reporters. Her research interests include social anthropology, media studies, and creative research methods.
Go to Profile#13244
Gary Hawkins
#187326
Overall Influence
Gary Hawkins is an independent filmmaker born and raised in Thomasville, North Carolina. Hawkins has written and directed six films, including The Rough South of Harry Crews, which won an Emmy and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Gold Award in 1992, and The Rough South of Larry Brown, which was picked by The Oxford American as one of Thirteen Essential Southern Documentaries and was reviewed by Variety as a “beautifully conceived documentary film.” Hawkins’s fiction screenplay DownTime was selected by The Sundance Institute for the Writer’s Lab in the winter of 2000.
Go to Profile#13245
Biljana D. Obradović
#102584
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Biljana D. Obradović is a Serbian-American poet, critic, translator, and professor of English who has lived in Yugoslavia, Greece, India and the United States. Early life Obradoviċ was born in Bitola, Macedonia of Serbian parents, Dragoslav and Vera Obradoviċ, who originally came from the area of Aleksinac, Serbia. Her father was a customs officer, then a diplomat. She learned English at the age of ten at Pinewood Schools of Thessaloniki in Salonika, Greece which she attended from grade five to nine. She moved to Belgrade, Serbia, briefly then to Bombay, India, where she attended Cathedral and...
Go to Profile#13246
Yukihiro Ozaki
#24434
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
is a Japanese scientist. Kwansei Gakuin University, Department of Chemistry, School of Science and Technology, professor emeritus, Fellow. He was born in Sakai, Osaka, Japan. In 1973, he had B.Sc. in Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Osaka University. In 1978, he had PhD in Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Osaka University. He worked as a research associate in Division of Biological Sciences, National Research Council of Canada. In 1981, he became an instructor in Division of Biochemistry, Institute of Medical Science, The Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan and became an assistant professor there.
Go to Profile#13247
Martha Davis
#74344
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Martha F. Davis is a professor of law at Northeastern University in Boston. She authored the book Brutal Need, a study of the welfare rights movement of 1960 to 1973. Early life and education Davis is a native of Kansas. She holds an A.B. in anthropology, magna cum laude from Harvard College , a B.A. and M.A. from Trinity College, Oxford, and a J.D. from University of Chicago Law School where she was a member of its Law Review.
Go to Profile#13248
Don Suggs
#122550
Overall Influence
1945 - 2019 (74 years)
Don Suggs was an American artist based in Los Angeles, California. His paintings, drawings, photographs and sculptures are notable for their use of color. Biography Suggs was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in San Diego. He received a B.A. in 1969 from University of California, Los Angeles , having studied psychology, film, and art. He received both an M.A. in 1971 and an M.F.A. in Art in 1972 from UCLA.
Go to Profile#13249
Sisir Kumar Das
#50483
Overall Influence
1936 - 2003 (67 years)
Sisir Kumar Das was a linguist, poet, playwright, translator, comparatist and a prolific scholar of Indian literature. He is considered by many as the "doyen of Indian literary historiographers". Almost singlehandedly Das built an integrated history of Indian literature composed of many languages, a task that had seemed to many important scholars of Indian literature to be “a historian’s despair”. His three volumes A History of Indian Literature is credited for having devised hitherto absent methods necessary for situating diverse Indian literary cultures in history. Apart from this, anothe...
Go to Profile#13250
Lora Talley Watts
#191508
Overall Influence
