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).
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List of the most influential people in Computer Science,
#14151
Ichiro Fukuzawa
1898 - 1992 (94 years)
Ichiro Fukuzawa was a Japanese modernist painter credited with the establishment of Surrealism in Japan's artistic communities during the early 1930s. While Surrealist artists are known for their distinct focus on the human subconsciousness and dreams, Fukuzawa's Western-style paintings depart from such conventions by instead providing sharply satirical commentaries on human behavior and systemic social issues in Japan, including the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the adverse impacts of the 1973 Oil Crisis on the Japanese economy. Since he was associated with Surrealism's progressive i...
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Hassan Suhrawardy
1884 - 1946 (62 years)
Lieutenant-Colonel Hassan Suhrawardy CStJ, FRCS was a Bengali surgeon, military officer in the British Indian Army, politician, and a public official. He was the former chairman of the executive committee of the East London Mosque. Knighted in 1932, he renounced his British honours a month before his death.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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Blake Cady
#14177
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...
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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.
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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.
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Nenghaif Yu
#14181
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.
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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 .
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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.
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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.
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David W. Dunstan
#14186
Barbara Hepworth
1903 - 1975 (72 years)
Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was an English artist and sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism and in particular modern sculpture. Along with artists such as Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Hepworth was a leading figure in the colony of artists who resided in St Ives during the Second World War.
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Leslie Richard Foulds
#14188
Alexandre Cabanel
1823 - 1889 (66 years)
Alexandre Cabanel was a French painter. He painted historical, classical and religious subjects in the academic style. He was also well known as a portrait painter. According to Diccionario Enciclopedico Salvat, Cabanel is the best representative of L'art pompier, and was Napoleon III's preferred painter.
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Thomas Rowlandson
1756 - 1827 (71 years)
Thomas Rowlandson was an English artist and caricaturist of the Georgian Era, noted for his political satire and social observation. A prolific artist and printmaker, Rowlandson produced both individual social and political satires, as well as a large number of illustrations for novels, humorous books, and topographical works. Like other caricaturists of his age such as James Gillray, his caricatures are often robust or bawdy. Rowlandson also produced highly explicit erotica for a private clientele; this was never published publicly at the time and is now only found in a small number of collections.
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Charles Willson Peale
1741 - 1827 (86 years)
Charles Willson Peale was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician, and naturalist. In 1775, inspired by the American Revolution, Peale moved from his native Maryland to Philadelphia, where he set up a painting studio and joined the Sons of Liberty. During the American Revolutionary War, Peale served in the Pennsylvania Militia and the Continental Army, participating in several military campaigns. In addition to his military service, Peale also served in the Pennsylvania State Assembly from 1779 to 1780.
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Alexander Rodchenko
1891 - 1956 (65 years)
Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was a Russian and Soviet artist, sculptor, photographer, and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova.
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Kate Greenaway
1846 - 1901 (55 years)
Catherine Greenaway was an English Victorian artist and writer, known for her children's book illustrations. She received her education in graphic design and art between 1858 and 1871 from the Finsbury School of Art, the South Kensington School of Art, the Heatherley School of Art, and the Slade School of Fine Art. She began her career designing for the burgeoning holiday card market, producing Christmas and Valentine's cards. In 1879 wood-block engraver and printer, Edmund Evans, printed Under the Window, an instant best-seller, which established her reputation. Her collaboration with Evan...
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Antonio Canova
1757 - 1822 (65 years)
Antonio Canova was an Italian Neoclassical sculptor, famous for his marble sculptures. Often regarded as the greatest of the Neoclassical artists, his sculpture was inspired by the Baroque and the classical revival, and has been characterised as having avoided the melodramatics of the former, and the cold artificiality of the latter.
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James Miller
1860 - 1947 (87 years)
James Miller was a Scottish architect, recognised for his commercial architecture in Glasgow and for his Scottish railway stations. Notable among these are the American-influenced Union Bank building at 110–20 St Vincent Street; his 1901–1905 extensions to Glasgow Central railway station; and Wemyss Bay railway station on the Firth of Clyde. His lengthy career resulted in a wide range of building types, and, with the assistance of skilled draughtsmen such as Richard M Gunn, he adapted his designs to changing tastes and new architectural materials and technologies.
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Mary Cassatt
1844 - 1926 (82 years)
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania , but lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.
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Kai W. Hwang
#14197
Eižens Ārinš
1911 - 1987 (76 years)
Eižens Ārinš was a mathematician and computer scientist. He was one of those who contributed to the return of Emanuel Grinberg to the University of Latvia. Education and career Ārinš was born on 16 May 1911 in Krasnojarsk, Siberia, where his father was in exile. In 1920 the family returned to Riga. He graduated from the University of Latvia in 1941 during the German occupation of Latvia. After Second World War, Ārinš had to graduate again because the Soviet authorities refused to recognise his degree. He graduated again in 1946 from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Latvian State University.
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Douglas M. Templeton
#14199
Edward Steichen
1879 - 1973 (94 years)
Edward Jean Steichen was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography. Steichen was credited with transforming photography into an art form. His photographs appeared in Alfred Stieglitz's groundbreaking magazine Camera Work more often than anyone else during its publication run from 1903 to 1917. Stieglitz hailed him as "the greatest photographer that ever lived".
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