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,
#14901
Anudvaipayan Bhattacharya
1941 - 1971 (30 years)
Anudvaipayan Bhattacharya was a lecturer of the Department of Applied Physics at the University of Dhaka who was killed by the Pakistan Army on 25 March 1971. Early life Bhattacharya was born in a Bengali Hindu Brahmin family on 31 January 1941 in the village of Jantari in erstwhile greater Sylhet district of Assam in British India. His birthplace is now under Nabiganj Upazila in Habiganj District of Sylhet Division in Bangladesh. His father Digendra Chandra Bhattacharya was a school teacher. After the Partition of India and inclusion of Sylhet in East Pakistan, the Bhattacharya family did n...
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David Drake
1800 - 1879 (79 years)
David Drake , also known as "Dave Pottery" and "Dave the Potter," was an American potter and enslaved African American who lived in Edgefield, South Carolina. Drake lived and worked in Edgefield for almost all his life.
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Kōno Bairei
1844 - 1895 (51 years)
Kōno Bairei was a Japanese painter, book illustrator, and art teacher. He was born and lived in Kyoto. He was a member of the broad Maruyama-Shijo school and was a master of kacho-e painting in the Meiji period of Japan.
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Adele Goodman Clark
1882 - 1983 (101 years)
Adele Goodman Clark was an American artist and suffragist. Early life Clark was born in 1882 in Montgomery, Alabama to Robert Clark, a railroad worker originally from Belfast, and Estelle Goodman Clark, a Jewish music teacher originally from New Orleans. She was the sister of fellow suffragist Edith Clark Cowles.
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William Callyhan Robinson
1834 - 1911 (77 years)
William Callyhan Robinson was an American jurist and academic. Life After studies at Norwich Academy and Williston Seminary, he matriculated at Wesleyan University in 1850, leaving the college at the close of his sophomore year in 1852. Subsequently, Robinson entered Dartmouth College, graduating from the latter institution in 1854 . He then entered the Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and graduated in 1857. Ordained to the Episcopalian ministry, he served first at Pittston, Pennsylvania , and then at Scranton, Pennsylvania . After a religious conversion, he was rece...
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Michał Wiszniewski
1794 - 1865 (71 years)
Michał Wiszniewski was a Polish philosopher, psychologist, and literary historian. Life Wiszniewski graduated from the celebrated Krzemieniec Lyceum , where he subsequently taught for a time. In 1831 he became a professor at Kraków's Jagiellonian University. He was a conservative activist during the Kraków Uprising of 1846. In 1848 he emigrated to Italy.
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Caleb Thomas Winchester
1847 - 1920 (73 years)
Caleb Thomas Winchester was an American English scholar. Biography He was born in Montville, Connecticut. He prepared for college at Wilbraham Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. He then attended Wesleyan University, where he graduated in 1869. He remained at Wesleyan, where he was librarian until 1873, professor of rhetoric and English literature until 1890, and simply professor of English literature after that. During 1880-81 he studied in Leipzig, Germany. He was noted for the quality of his lectures.
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Eugen Botezat
1871 - 1964 (93 years)
Eugen C. Botezat was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian zoologist. Born in Tereblecea, in Austrian-ruled Bukovina, his parents Constantin and Domnica were teachers. He attended three grades of primary school in his native village from 1877 to 1879, followed by a fourth in Siret, where he learned German. Botezat went to high school in Czernowitz and Suceava, graduating in 1892. He studied natural sciences at the German University in Prague. In 1897, he became a teaching assistant at its zoology institute; a year later, he received a doctorate. From 1898 to 1919 he taught natural sciences at th...
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Jackson J. Bushnell
1815 - 1873 (58 years)
Jackson Jones Bushnell was an American professor. Bushnell was born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, February 19, 1815. He graduated from Yale College in 1841. He entered Andover Theological Seminary in December 1841, but after a few months there, became a tutor in Western Reserve College, Ohio. After a tutorship of two years, during the latter of which he was licensed to preach, he was appointed financial agent of the college, and served in that relation, and as an agent of the Western College Society, until April 1848. He was then appointed Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Beloit College, and entered on his office as the pioneer instructor of the new institution.
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Francis de Erdely
1904 - 1959 (55 years)
Francis de Erdely was a Hungarian-American artist who was renowned in Europe and the United States for his powerful figure paintings and drawings as well as for his teaching abilities. Biography Francis De Erdely was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1904. De Erdely first studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Budapest , as well as the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid and the prestigious Sorbonne and Ecole du Louvre in Paris.
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Richard Foster Jones
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Richard Foster Jones was a professor of English at Stanford University, and executive head of the university's English department. His research interests included early modern English literature , the history of science, and the writings of Jonathan Swift.
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Piotr Belousov
1912 - 1989 (77 years)
Piotr Petrovich Belousov was a Ukrainian and Russian graphic artist, painter, art teacher, professor of the Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, People's Artist of the USSR, corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, who lived and worked in Leningrad. He was regarded as one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad school of painting, being most famous for his portraits and historical paintings.
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Winfred Trexler Root
1879 - 1947 (68 years)
Winfred Trexler Root was an American historian and educator. Root was born in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania and received his undergraduate education at Princeton University. He earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1908, thereafter joining the faculty of the University of Wisconsin. In 1925 he accepted a position as head of the history department at the University of Iowa, succeeding Arthur M. Schlesinger, and would remain there until his death. George L. Mosse, who was a history professor at Iowa during Root's tenure, described him as a "benevolent dictator". In 1930 Roo...
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Beniah Longley Whitman
1862 - 1911 (49 years)
Rev. Beniah Longley Whitman was the 11th president of Colby College, and later Columbian College . Life Beniah Longley Whitman was born in Wilmot, Nova Scotia on November 21, 1962. He prepared for college at the Worcester Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts. He graduated from Brown University in the class of 1887, with a B.A. degree, and received an M.A. degree in 1890. He received the honorary degree of D.D. from Bowdoin College in 1894; the degree of LL.D. from Howard University in 1899, and from Furman University in 1906.
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Sonia Saxena
Sonia Saxena FRCGP is a British physician who is a Professor of Primary care and Director of the Child Health Unit at the School of Public Health, Imperial College London. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners and a practises as a GP in Putney, London. She is known for her work in improving healthcare, and a focus on improving child health in the early years of life and reducing social inequalities.
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Robert Lumiansky
1913 - 1987 (74 years)
Robert Mayer Lumiansky was an American scholar of Medieval English and president of the American Council of Learned Societies. Born in Darlington, South Carolina, Robert Lumiansky received a bachelor's degree from The Citadel, a master's degree from the University of South Carolina, and a doctorate from the University of North Carolina. He was professor and chairman of the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania from 1965 to 1973 and professor of English at New York University from 1975 to 1983. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
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Kyūichirō Washizu
1921 - 1981 (60 years)
Kyūichirō Washizu was a Japanese aircraft engineer and academic. He served as professor of aeronautical engineering at the University of Tokyo and professor of engineering science at the Osaka University. He led the performance-related design of the kamikaze attack aircraft Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka during World War II.
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Henry E. Sigerist
1891 - 1957 (66 years)
Henry Ernest Sigerist was a Swiss medical historian and proponent of universal health care. Career After graduating with an M.D. at the University of Zurich in 1917, Sigerist devoted himself to the study of the history of medicine. Socialized Medicine in the Soviet Union , and History of Medicine were among his most important works. He emerged as a major spokesman for "compulsory health insurance". From 1932 to 1947 he was director at the Johns Hopkins University Institute of History of Medicine. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1945 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1951.
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Frank N. Freeman
1880 - 1961 (81 years)
Frank Nugent Freeman was a Canadian-born American educational psychologist. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1909 to 1939, and served as dean of the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Education from then until 1948. Among his most notable books are Mental Tests: Their History, Principles and Applications and Twins: A Study of Heredity and Environment .
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Pierre Courcelle
1912 - 1980 (68 years)
Pierre Paul Courcelle was a French historian who was a specialist of ancient philosophy and of Latin Patristics, especially of St Augustine. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1968.
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William S. Gray
1885 - 1960 (75 years)
William S. Gray was an American educator and literacy advocate. Life and career Gray was born in the town of Coatsburg, Illinois, on June 5, 1885. He graduated from high school in 1904 and began teaching in a one-room school house in Adams County, Illinois. After four years of teaching and being a principal he went to Illinois State Normal University for a two-year teacher training course. His studies were influenced by the North American Herbartian movement that emphasized starting with what the child knows and proceeding with an inductive instructional approach.
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King-Sun Fu
1930 - 1985 (55 years)
King-Sun Fu was a Chinese-born American computer scientist. He was a Goss Distinguished Professor at Purdue University School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in West Lafayette, Indiana. He was instrumental in the founding of International Association for Pattern Recognition , served as its first president, and is widely recognized for his extensive and pioneering contributions to the field of pattern recognition and machine intelligence. In honor of the memory of Professor King-Sun Fu, IAPR gives the biennial King-Sun Fu Prize to a living person in the recognition of an outstanding technical contribution to the field of pattern recognition.
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Dan Willard
Dan Edward Willard was an American computer scientist and logician, and a professor of computer science at the University at Albany. Education and career Willard did his undergraduate studies in mathematics at Stony Brook University, graduating in 1970. He went on to graduate studies in mathematics at Harvard University, earning a master's degree in 1972 and a doctorate in 1978. After leaving Harvard, he worked at Bell Labs for four years before joining the Albany faculty in 1983.
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Norbert Wiener
1894 - 1964 (70 years)
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician, computer scientist and philosopher. He became a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and mathematical noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.
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Katie Atkinson
Katie Marie Atkinson is a professor of computer science and the Dean of the School of Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Liverpool. She works on researching and building artificial intelligence tools to help judges and lawyers. Atkinson previously served as the President of the International Association for AI and Law.
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Alan Perlis
1922 - 1990 (68 years)
Alan Jay Perlis was an American computer scientist and professor at Purdue University, Carnegie Mellon University and Yale University. He is best known for his pioneering work in programming languages and was the first recipient of the Turing Award.
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Raymond F. Boyce
1947 - 1974 (27 years)
Raymond F. Boyce was an American computer scientist who was known for his research in relational databases. He is best known for his work co-developing the SQL database language and Boyce-Codd normal form.
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Harry H. Goode
1909 - 1960 (51 years)
Harry H. Goode was an American computer engineer and systems engineer and professor at the University of Michigan. He is known as co-author of the book Systems Engineering from 1957, which is one of the earliest significant books directly related to systems engineering.
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Alexandra Illmer Forsythe
1918 - 1980 (62 years)
Alexandra Winifred Illmer Forsythe was an American computer scientist best known for co-authoring a series of computer science textbooks during the 1960s and 1970s, including the first ever computer science textbook, Computer Science: A First Course, in 1969.
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Richard V. Andree
1919 - 1987 (68 years)
Richard Vernon Andree was an American mathematician and computer scientist. Andree taught at the University of Oklahoma for 37 years, and served as a professor emeritus there until his death. He and his wife, Josephine, founded the Mu Alpha Theta mathematics honor society. Andree wrote a book on abstract algebra entitled Selections From Modern Abstract Algebra which was first published in 1958. He also wrote and published at his own expense numerous puzzle books and enjoyed cryptography. Andree and his students developed the ALPS programming language for the Bendix G-15 computer.
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Oscar Jacobson
1882 - 1966 (84 years)
Oscar Brousse Jacobson was a Swedish-born American painter and museum curator. From 1915 to 1945, he was the director of the University of Oklahoma's School of Art, later known as the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. He curated exhibitions and wrote books about Native American art.
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John Edwin Windrow
1900 - 1984 (84 years)
John Edwin Windrow was an American educator. He became known as "Mr. Peabody" for his five-decade career at Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee. He was a critic of Nashville's social ills and intellectual segregation.
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Shina Inoue Kan
1899 - 1982 (83 years)
Shina Inoue Kan , also seen as "Shina Inouye", "Shina Kan", and "Shinako Kan", was a Japanese college professor. Early life Shina Inoue was born on 25 July 1899 in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. In 1921, her mother Hideko Inoue attended the Conference on Limitation of Armament in Washington D.C., representing the women's peace movement in Japan, with Yajima Kajiko and plant scientist Marian Irwin Osterhout. In 1931, Hide Inoue became the first woman president of Japan Women's University.
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Katherine R. Whitmore
1897 - 1982 (85 years)
Katherine R. Whitmore was a Spanish literature professor at Smith College. She majored in Spanish language and literature at the University of Kansas, and received her doctorate from Berkeley. She taught at a college in Richmond and, from 1930 on, at Smith College. She married Brewer Whitmore, another professor at Smith, in 1939.
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Maximilian Salzmann
1862 - 1954 (92 years)
Maximilian Salzmann was an Austrian ophthalmologist. In 1887 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Vienna, where he later worked as an assistant to Ernst Fuchs at the eye hospital. In 1906 he became an associate professor, then in 1911 was appointed professor of ophthalmology at the University of Graz. In 1918/19 he served as dean to the faculty of medicine.
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Elena Freda
1890 - 1978 (88 years)
Elena Freda was an Italian mathematician and mathematical physicist known for her collaboration with Vito Volterra on mathematical analysis and its applications to electromagnetism and biomathematics.
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John McCrae
1872 - 1918 (46 years)
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during the First World War and a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres, in Belgium. He is best known for writing the famous war memorial poem "In Flanders Fields". McCrae died of pneumonia near the end of the war. His famous poem is a threnody, a genre of lament.
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Georges Dwelshauvers
1866 - 1937 (71 years)
Georges Dwelshauvers, who also wrote under the pseudonym Georges Mesnil was a Flemish Belgian philosopher and psychologist. He was the brother of the art critic and anarchist Jacques Mesnil. Dwelshauvers studied philosophy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles before studying in Germany, where he was attracted to the new experimental psychology of Wilhelm Wundt. His attempt to submit a psychological thesis for a Brussels doctorate was blocked by Guillaume Tiberghien in what became known as the Dwelshauvers affair, and Dwelshauvers only started lecturing in philosophy after Tiberghien's retire...
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Igor Grabar
1871 - 1960 (89 years)
Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar was a Russian post-impressionist painter, publisher, restorer and historian of art. Grabar, descendant of a wealthy Rusyn family, was trained as a painter by Ilya Repin in Saint Petersburg and by Anton Ažbe in Munich. He reached his peak in painting in 1903–1907 and was notable for a peculiar divisionist painting technique bordering on pointillism and his rendition of snow.
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J. C. P. Miller
1906 - 1981 (75 years)
Jeffrey Charles Percy Miller was an English mathematician and computing pioneer. He worked in number theory and on geometry, particularly polyhedra, where Miller's monster refers to the great dirhombicosidodecahedron.
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Henry Thew Stephenson
1870 - 1957 (87 years)
Henry Thew Stephenson was a teacher and writer. Stephenson was born in Cincinnati to Reuben Henry and Louise Stephenson. He attended Woodward High School before gaining degrees from Ohio State University, Harvard University. and Indiana University. He spent a year doing research at the British Museum.
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Jerry Bywaters
1906 - 1989 (83 years)
Williamson Gerald Bywaters , known as Jerry Bywaters, was an American artist, university professor, museum director, art critic and a historian of the Texas region. Based in Dallas, Bywaters worked to elevate the quality of Texas art, attracting national recognition to the art of the region.
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Arthur Illies
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
Karl Wilhelm Arthur Illies was a German painter and graphic artist. Life and work He was born to Theodor Friedrich Wilhelm Illies, a merchant, and his wife, Albertine Mathilde née Schwarze. He attended the Johanneum then, at sixteen, began an apprenticeship as a decorative painter at the firm of . In the evenings he studied nude drawing with and, on Sundays, he studied animal drawing at the zoo with . In 1889, after passing his journeyman examination, he went to Munich for studies at the Königlichen Kunstgewerbeschule, where his primary instructor was Ludwig Lesker . The following year, he enrolled at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.
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Kaj Franck
1911 - 1989 (78 years)
Kaj Gabriel Franck was one of the leading figures of Finnish design and an influential figure in design and applied arts between 1940 and 1980. Franck's parents were Kurt Franck and Genéviève "Vevi" Ahrenberg. He was a Swedish-speaking Finn, and he was of German descent through his father.
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Ernest A. Batchelder
1875 - 1957 (82 years)
Ernest Allan Batchelder was an American artist and educator who made Southern California his home in the early 20th century. He created art tiles and was a leader in the American Arts and Crafts Movement.
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Franciszek Misztal
1901 - 1980 (79 years)
Franciszek Misztal - Polish aircraft designer. He studied at Lviv Polytechnic and received his doctorate in 1929 at the Technical University in Aachen. From 1928 he worked in the PZL in Warsaw as a constructor. Contributor to the design of aircraft PZL.23 Karaś , PZL.19, PZL.26 and the chief designer of PZL.38 Wilk. Inventor of the caisson structure with corrugated wings.
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Ritchie Girvan
1877 - Present (149 years)
Ritchie Girvan was a Scottish literary scholar, author, and academic; throughout his career he was associated with the University of Glasgow, where he made his name studying the Old English poem Beowulf. He is best known for his 1935 book Beowulf and the Seventh Century: Language and Content.
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Lucien March
1859 - 1933 (74 years)
Lucien March was a French demographer, statistician, and engineer. In 1878 Lucien March enrolled in l'École polytechnique and after graduation in 1880 served in the naval artillery corps. He was the director of the from 1896 to 1920. In 1896, he introduced Hollerith punched card tabulating machines into France and later invented an improved machine, the classifier-counter-printer, which was used until the 1940s. He also arranged a sorting process using the workplace addresses of the people counted in the French population census to generate valuable economic data and labor statistics.
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Hale Woodruff
1900 - 1980 (80 years)
Hale Aspacio Woodruff was an American artist known for his murals, paintings, and prints. Early life, family and education Woodruff was born in Cairo, Illinois, on August 26, 1900. He grew up in a black family in Nashville, Tennessee, where he attended the local segregated schools. He studied at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Harvard Fogg Art Museum.
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James Goldschmidt
1874 - 1940 (66 years)
James Paul Goldschmidt was a German jurist who made important contributions to German criminal law and criminal procedure law. He studied legal science in Heidelberg and Berlin. Of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, Goldschmidt was a professor at the University of Berlin from 1919 until his retirement in 1934 due to racial policy of Nazi Germany. In 1938 he eventually emigrated to the United Kingdom, and later Uruguay, where he died in 1940.
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