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 …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Computer Science,
#14101
Oscar Craig
1846 - Present (180 years)
Oscar J. Craig was the first president of the University of Montana. Craig served as the president between July 1895 to October 1908, and he managed the university almost single-handedly for those thirteen years. Craig taught a few classes each semester, as well as helping to establish the campus itself. He also founded a significant amount of the programs at the university that still persist today. Prior to graduating from DePauw University in 1884, Craig served in the position of Superintendent of City Schools in Sullivan, Indiana for a few years. In 1883, he became a professor at Purdue University, teaching political economy and history before moving to Montana to found the University.
Go to Profile#14102
Götz Freiherr von Pölnitz
1906 - 1967 (61 years)
Hieronymus Christoph Jan Eugen Franz Gottfried Maria Freiherr von Pölnitz, known as Götz Freiherr von Pölnitz was a German social historian, economic historian and archivist.
Go to Profile#14103
Horace Day
1909 - 1984 (75 years)
Horace Day , also Horace Talmage Day, was an American painter of the American scene who came to maturity during the Thirties and was active as a painter over the next 50 years. He traveled widely in the United States and continued to explore throughout his life subjects that first captured his attention as an artist in the Thirties. He gained early recognition for his portraits and landscapes, particularly his paintings in the Carolina Lowcountry.
Go to Profile#14104
William Henry Schofield
1870 - 1920 (50 years)
William Henry Schofield was an American academic, founder of the Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature. He was professor of comparative literature at Harvard University, and president of the American-Scandinavian Foundation .
Go to Profile#14105
Rene d'Harnoncourt
1901 - 1968 (67 years)
René d'Harnoncourt was an Austrian-born American art curator. He was Director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 1949 to 1967. Background Of Austrian, Czech, and French descent, Count Rene d'Harnoncourt was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Count Hubert d'Harnoncourt and his wife, the former Julie Mittrowsky. Although he showed an interest in art as a child, he received a technical education. After his family suffered severe financial losses, he moved to Paris in 1924, and went to Mexico in 1926. D'Harnoncourt initially eked out a minimal living as a commercial artist, but quickly ...
Go to Profile#14106
Marco Mincoff
1909 - 1987 (78 years)
Marco Mincoff Shakespearean scholar and professor of English Studies at the University of Sofia. Mincoff was born July 15 , 1909 in Chamkorya . With a Humboldt grant he completed his doctoral dissertation at the University of Berlin in 1933. From 1951 to 1974 he was head of the department of English at the University of Sofia. Over the years, teaching courses in grammar, phonetics, stylistics and the history of English literature, he wrote various textbooks and monographs. However his main subject was English Renaissance drama, on which he wrote numerous articles. His work earned him recognit...
Go to Profile#14107
Frederick W. Hilles
1900 - 1975 (75 years)
Frederick Whiley "Ted" Hilles was Bodman Professor of English Literature at Yale University. He was a noted authority on the literary career of Sir Joshua Reynolds and edited the 1929 edition of Reynolds letters that was published by Cambridge University Press. During the Second World War he worked in intelligence for the U.S. Army at Bletchley Park in England.
Go to Profile#14108
Albert Wurts Whitney
1870 - 1943 (73 years)
Albert Wurts Whitney was a statistician and actuarial scientist, known for his role in the application of Bayes' rule to the development of standards in setting insurance premiums for workmen's compensation. He was a pioneer in accident prevention work and public safety education.
Go to Profile#14109
Herschel Levit
1912 - 1986 (74 years)
Herschel "Harry" Levit was an American social realist artist, designer, illustrator, author, and educator. In the 1930s and 1940s, he was active in the Federal Art Project sponsored by the Works Progress Administration . He was a Professor emeritus at Pratt Institute, teaching from 1947 to 1977 and teaching at Parsons School of Design, from 1977 to 1986.
Go to Profile#14110
Alfred Rusescu
1895 - 1981 (86 years)
Alfred Rusescu was a Romanian pediatrician. Born in Bucharest into a family of intellectuals, he attended Gheorghe Lazăr High School. In 1913, Rusescu entered the Medicine faculty of the University of Bucharest. Following graduation, he studied medicine at the University of Paris from 1920 to 1925. His thesis dealt with the development of waistlines in infants. From 1922 to 1926, he was an intern at Notre-Dame de Bon Secours Hospital in Paris, under the noted pediatrician .
Go to Profile#14111
Herman Lukoff
1923 - 1979 (56 years)
Herman Lukoff was a computer pioneer and fellow of the IEEE. Formative years Lukoff was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Aaron and Anna Lukoff. He graduated from the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 1943. While at the Moore School, he helped to develop the ENIAC and EDVAC computers.
Go to Profile#14112
Ulrich Hütter
1910 - 1990 (80 years)
Ulrich Hütter was an Austro-German aeronautical engineer and university teacher who came to wider prominence through his second career as a pioneer of wind power technology. Life Ulrich Hütter was born in Pilsen in Bohemia, Austria-Hungary . Eduard Hütter , his father, was an architect originally from Salzburg, whose professional career increasingly focused on monument conservation on behalf of the government. The family relocated to Salzburg in connection with Eduard Hütter's work after the war ended, and Ulrich Hütter enrolled at the classics-focused "Humanistisches Gymnasium" there in 192...
Go to Profile#14113
Nico H.J. van den Boogaard
1938 - 1982 (44 years)
Nicolaas Hendricus Johannes van den Boogaard was a medievalist scholar, professor, and dean of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Amsterdam. Career In addition to his work as a teacher and administrator, he published widely on medieval French literature. His doctoral dissertation, Rondeaux et refrains du XIIe siècle au début du XIVe: Collationnement, introduction et notes , continues to be cited. This dissertation built a corpus of Old French lyric poetry that Van den Boogaard then put into a computer database. In 1970, he enlarged the database and generated statistical information about several genres of medieval French literature.
Go to Profile#14114
Oladele Ajose
1907 - 1978 (71 years)
Oladele Adebayo Ajose was a Lagos prince who was the vice-chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University. He was an early advocate of primary health care in Nigeria and the first tenured African professor at the University of Ibadan and in Nigeria. He was one of the earliest Africans to hold a professorial chair.
Go to Profile#14115
Herbert Read
1893 - 1968 (75 years)
Sir Herbert Edward Read, was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read was co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. As well as being a prominent English anarchist, he was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism. He was co-editor with Michael Fordham of the British edition in English of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung.
Go to Profile#14116
A. L. Strand
1894 - 1980 (86 years)
August Leroy Strand was an American entomologist who served as President of Montana State University from 1937 to 1942, and as President of Oregon State University from 1942 to 1961. Life and career Strand was born on February 12, 1894, in Victoria, Texas, to August M. and Christina Strand. His father was born in Sweden about 1855, and his mother in Sweden about 1861. They emigrated to the United States, first taking up residence in Missouri, where their first three children were born: Rose L. in 1885, Ettie C. in 1888, and May F. in 1887. The family moved to Victoria, Texas, where August was born in 1894.
Go to Profile#14117
Dwight Hillis Wilson
1909 - 1962 (53 years)
Dwight Hillis Wilson Sr. was an American archivist, researcher, and teacher. He was the first archivist of Fisk University. Personal life Wilson was born on October 18, 1909, in Raleigh, North Carolina. His father, a Methodist minister, was also born in South Carolina while his mother came from Pennsylvania.
Go to Profile#14118
Petros Kokkalis
1896 - 1962 (66 years)
Professor Petros Kokkalis , a distinguished professor of Medicine in the University of Athens has been one of the leading figures of Medicine in pre WWII Greece, introducing pioneering methods in thoracic surgery and neurosurgery. His main medical achievements include the introduction of thoracoplasty in Greece and removal of the phrenic nerve for the treatment of tuberculosis, as well as the first pneumonectomy with the Tourniquet method and the first pericardiectomy for the release of compressive pericarditis.
Go to Profile#14119
James Melvin Rhodes
1916 - 1976 (60 years)
James Melvin Rhodes was an American educational scientist, assistant professor of education and creativity researcher who was the originator of the pioneering concept of the 4 "P"s of creativity. Biography Mel Rhodes was born on June 14, 1916, to Waldo and Grace Rhodes in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, as the second eldest of 7 siblings.
Go to Profile#14120
Charles Comfort
1900 - 1994 (94 years)
Charles Fraser Comfort, LL. D. was a Scotland-born Canadian painter, sculptor, teacher, writer and administrator. Career and biography Early life Born near Edinburgh, Scotland, Comfort moved to Winnipeg in 1912 with his family. His father found work with the treasury department for the city of Winnipeg. Comfort, as the eldest child, had to work from a young age to help support his family. In 1914, he began work as a commercial artist at the newly established Brigdens commercial art branch office in Winnipeg established by Frederick Henry Brigden, and by 1916 Comfort started attending eveni...
Go to Profile#14121
Lyon Blease
1884 - 1963 (79 years)
Prof. Walter Lyon Blease , was a British Liberal Party politician, barrister and academic. Background He was born in Liverpool, the son of Walter and Mary Cecilia Blease. He was educated at Parkfield School, Liverpool; Shrewsbury School and Liverpool University. He was awarded the Studentship at Bar Final Examination, 1906. He married, in 1918, Harriott Davies. They had three daughters.
Go to Profile#14122
Howard Besser
1900 - Present (126 years)
Howard Besser is a scholar of digital preservation, digital libraries, and preservation of film and video. He is Professor of Cinema Studies and the founding director of the NYU Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program , a graduate program in the Tisch School. Besser also worked as a Senior Scientist at New York University's Digital Library Initiative. He conducted extensive research in image databases, multimedia operation, digital library, and social and cultural influence of the latest Information Technology. Besser is a prolific writer and speaker, and has consulted with many governments, educational institutions, and arts agencies on digital preservation matters.
Go to Profile#14123
Georges Hostelet
1875 - 1960 (85 years)
Georges Hostelet was a Belgian chemist, sociologist, mathematician, and philosopher. He was born in the municipality of Chimay in 1875. He attended the Royal Military Academy, and reached the rank of lieutenant. In 1897, he left the academy and enrolled in the University of Liège, where he received his doctorate in 1905. two years later, Hostelet began work with the Solvay & Cie Company as a chemical engineer and worked closely with Ernest Solvay. In 1911, he attended the First Solvay Conference, eventually becoming its last surviving participant.
Go to Profile#14124
Z. T. Johnson
1897 - 1981 (84 years)
Zachary Taylor Johnson was born June 18, 1897, in Athens, Georgia, to a farmer's family. While working as a printer for the Macon News in 1913, Johnson converted to Christianity and felt called of God to preach. He entered Asbury University in September 1913 and transferred to Trevecca College in 1914.
Go to Profile#14125
Arvi Grotenfelt
1863 - 1941 (78 years)
Arvid Grotenfelt , was a Finnish philosopher and psychologist. He was one of the founders of the Finnish Science Academy and the chairman of the Finnish Philosophical society 1905–36. He was also founder and first chairman of the Sällskapet för Psykisk Forskning . He has studied for Wilhelm Wundt and Rudolf Eucken, and written on the subject of history philosophy. In his mind historiography is always estimating, as when it comes to the selection of sources, and this can be connected to weltanschauung.
Go to Profile#14126
Heloise Hersey
1855 - Present (171 years)
Heloise Edwina Hersey was an American scholar of Anglo-Saxon language and literature. A graduate of Vassar College and the first female professor of Anglo-Saxon studies in the United States, she was appointed at Smith College in 1878.
Go to Profile#14127
Robert d'Escourt Atkinson
1898 - 1982 (84 years)
Robert d'Escourt Atkinson was a British astronomer, physicist and inventor. Biography Robert d'Escourt Atkinson was born in Wales on April 11, 1898. He went to Manchester Grammar School and received a degree in physics from Oxford in 1922. He worked in the Clarendon Laboratory and then went to Göttingen, where he received a Ph.D. in physics in 1928. After teaching physics at the Berlin Technische Hochscule for a year, Atkinson was appointed Assistant Professor of Physics at Rutgers University. He taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey from 1929 to 1937, when he became Chief Assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
Go to Profile#14128
David Park
1935 - 1990 (55 years)
David Michael Ritchie Park was a British computer scientist. He worked on the first implementation of the programming language Lisp. He became an authority on the topics of fairness, program schemas and bisimulation in concurrent computing. At the University of Warwick, he was one of the earliest members of the computer science department, and served as chairperson.
Go to Profile#14129
Xavier Gonzalez
1898 - 1993 (95 years)
Xavier Gonzalez was an American artist. He was born in Almeria, Spain. He lived in Argentina and Mexico for some time, and was planning on becoming an engineer in a gold mine. In 1925, he immigrated to the United States.
Go to Profile#14130
Lloyd Lozes Goff
1908 - 1982 (74 years)
Lloyd Lozes Goff was an American painter. Goff was born in 1908 in Dallas, Texas. He studied at the Art Students League and the University of New Mexico. His academic work at the University of New Mexico led to his becoming Assistant Professor of Art and Acting Head of the Art Department from 1944 to 1947. He illustrated two books published in 1949, New Mexico Village Arts and Golden Footlight's. He also wrote and illustrated two children's books about migratory birds, Run, Sandpiper, Run and Fly, Redwing, Fly.
Go to Profile#14131
Ruth Stokes
1890 - 1968 (78 years)
Ruth Wyckliffe Stokes was an American mathematician, cryptologist, and astronomer. She earned the first doctorate in mathematics from Duke University, made pioneering contributions to the theory of linear programming, and founded the Pi Mu Epsilon journal.
Go to Profile#14132
May Lansfield Keller
1877 - 1964 (87 years)
May Lansfield Keller was a college professor and dean. Born in Baltimore, Maryland to Wilmer Lansfield Keller and Jeanie née Simonton, May Lansfield Keller received an early private school education at the Little Dames' School in the Baltimore area. From 1888 to 1894, she studied at the Girls' Latin School, then matriculated to Goucher College in 1894. She joined Pi Beta Phi, and would remain active in the sorority past her graduation in 1898. At this point she became interested in taking graduate studies in Germany, but her father was opposed so she instead enrolled at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1898.
Go to Profile#14133
Julio de Diego
1900 - 1979 (79 years)
Julio de Diego was a Spanish-born American visual artist. One of his best known paintings is "The Portentous City," a vertical view of Manhattan skyscrapers. Biography 1900s–30s Julio De Diego was born in Madrid, Spain in 1900. At the age of 15 he left home after his domineering father destroyed "every drawing in the house." Shortly thereafter, his art was exhibited for the first time in a show at a casino, where he sold his first painting. During this period, Diego also worked in a Madrid studio that produced scenery for opera productions. He appeared as an extra in the production by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes of Stravinsky's Petrushka, starring Vaslav Nijinsky.
Go to Profile#14134
Charles Manning
1894 - 1978 (84 years)
Charles Anthony Woodward Manning was a South African academic. He is considered to be a leading figure in the English School tradition of international relations scholarship. Early life and education Charles was the son of Dumaresque Williamson Manning and Helena Isabella Bell. He was educated at the Diocesan College , Rondebosch, the South African College, Cape Town; and as a Rhodes Scholar at Brasenose College, Oxford, which he entered in 1914. His academic career was interrupted by military service; he enlisted in the 18th Royal Fusilliers in 1914 and was commissioned in the 7th Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry in the following year.
Go to Profile#14135
Martin Mortensen
1872 - 1953 (81 years)
Martin Mortensen was a Danish-born American professor who headed of the Department of Dairy Industry at Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa. Early life and education Martin Mortensen was born on North Jutlandic Island in Sindal, Denmark. He was the son of Peder Christian Mortensen and Juliane Marie Mortensen . He completed a three-year course at the Royal Teachers Seminary and then emigrated to the United States in 1893. After working in and managing dairies in the Midwest and on the Pacific Coast, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in agriculture at Iowa State College and a LLD from Kans...
Go to Profile#14136
Stan Frankel
1919 - 1978 (59 years)
Stanley Phillips Frankel was an American computer scientist. He worked in the Manhattan Project and developed various computers as a consultant. Early life He was born in Los Angeles, attended graduate school at the University of Rochester, received his PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and began his career as a post-doctoral student under J. Robert Oppenheimer at University of California, Berkeley in 1942.
Go to Profile#14137
Masahiro Yasuoka
1898 - 1983 (85 years)
Masahiro Yasuoka was a Japanese scholar of yangmingism who, through his philosophy, reportedly exerted considerable influence on many Japanese politicians, including postwar prime ministers of Japan. He has been considered a backroom power broker or eminence grise.
Go to Profile#14138
John Singleton Copley
1738 - 1815 (77 years)
John Singleton Copley was an Anglo-American painter, active in both colonial America and England. He was probably born in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Anglo-Irish. After becoming well-established as a portrait painter of the wealthy in colonial New England, he moved to London in 1774, never returning to America. In London, he met considerable success as a portraitist for the next two decades, and also painted a number of large history paintings, which were innovative in their readiness to depict modern subjects and modern dress. His later years were less successful, and he died heavily in debt.
Go to Profile#14139
Maxfield Parrish
1870 - 1966 (96 years)
Maxfield Parrish was an American painter and illustrator active in the first half of the 20th century. He is known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery. His career spanned fifty years and was wildly successful: the National Museum of American Illustration deemed his painting Daybreak to be the most successful art print of the 20th century.
Go to Profile#14140
Canaletto
1697 - 1768 (71 years)
Giovanni Antonio Canal , commonly known as Canaletto , was an Italian painter from the Republic of Venice, considered an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school. Painter of cityscapes or vedute, of Venice, Rome, and London, he also painted imaginary views , although the demarcation in his works between the real and the imaginary is never quite clearcut. He was further an important printmaker using the etching technique. In the period from 1746 to 1756, he worked in England, where he painted many views of London and other sites, including Warwick Castle and Alnwick Castle. He was h...
Go to Profile#14141
Blake Cady
#14142
Kazimir Malevich
1879 - 1935 (56 years)
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist, whose pioneering work and writing influenced the development of abstract art in the 20th century. He was born in Kiev, to an ethnic Polish family. His concept of Suprematism sought to develop a form of expression that moved as far as possible from the world of natural forms and subject matter in order to access "the supremacy of pure feeling" and spirituality. Malevich is also sometimes considered to be part of the Ukrainian avant-garde that was shaped by Ukrainian-born artists who worked first in Ukraine and l...
Go to Profile#14143
Edward Ardizzone
1900 - 1979 (79 years)
Edward Jeffrey Irving Ardizzone, , who sometimes signed his work "DIZ", was a British painter, printmaker and war artist, and the author and illustrator of books, many of them for children. For Tim All Alone , which he wrote and illustrated, Ardizzone won the inaugural Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association for the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. For the 50th anniversary of the Medal in 2005, the book was named one of the top ten winning titles, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for public election of an all-time favourite.
Go to Profile#14144
Violet Oakley
1874 - 1961 (87 years)
Violet Oakley was an American artist. She was the first American woman to receive a public mural commission. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, she was renowned as a pathbreaker in mural decoration, a field that had been exclusively practiced by men. Oakley excelled at murals and stained glass designs that addressed themes from history and literature in Renaissance-revival styles.
Go to Profile#14145
Nenghaif Yu
#14146
Robert Delaunay
1885 - 1941 (56 years)
Robert Delaunay was a French artist of the School of Paris movement; who, with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others, co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. His later works were more abstract. His key influence related to bold use of colour and a clear love of experimentation with both depth and tone.
Go to Profile#14147
Hyacinthe Rigaud
1659 - 1743 (84 years)
Jacint Rigau-Ros i Serra , known in French as Hyacinthe Rigaud , was a Catalan-French baroque painter most famous for his portraits of Louis XIV and other members of the French nobility. Biography Rigaud was born in Perpignan, then part of the Crown of Aragon, a few months before Spain ceded the city to France under the Treaty of the Pyrenees . His family, the Rigau, were Catalan; he was the son of a tailor, the grandson of painter-gilders from Roussillon, and the elder brother of another painter .
Go to Profile#14148
Thomas Ender
1793 - 1875 (82 years)
Thomas Ender was an Austrian landscape painter and watercolorist. Life and work He was born to Johann Ender, a junk dealer, and was the twin brother of Johann Nepomuk Ender, a history painter. He and his brother were both enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, where he began by studying history painting with Hubert Maurer, but switched to landscape painting with Laurenz Janscha then, after Janscha's death in 1812, with Joseph Mössmer. He was awarded the Academy's first prize for landscape drawing.
Go to Profile#14149
Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi
766 - 874 (108 years)
Ahmad ibn 'Abdallah Habash Hasib Marwazi was a Persian astronomer, geographer, and mathematician from Merv in Khorasan, who was the first to describe the trigonometric ratios sine, cosine, tangent, and cotangent.
Go to Profile#14150
