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,
#14951
Abraham Lincoln McCrimmon
1865 - 1935 (70 years)
Abraham Lincoln McCrimmon was a Canadian academic and Chancellor of McMaster University. Born on a farm near Delhi in Norfolk County, Ontario, McCrimmon graduated from the University of Toronto in 1890. In 1892, he started teaching at Woodstock College and five years later became its principal. From 1903 to 1904, he studied at the University of Chicago. In 1906, he was appointed a professor at McMaster University. From 1911 to 1922, he was the Chancellor of McMaster.
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Józef Wieniawski
1837 - 1912 (75 years)
Józef Wieniawski was a Polish pianist, composer, conductor and teacher. He was born in Lublin, the younger brother of the famous violinist Henryk Wieniawski. After Franz Liszt, he was the first pianist to publicly perform all the études by Chopin. He appeared with Liszt in recitals in Paris, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Brussels, Leipzig and Amsterdam.
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Stuart Sutcliffe
1940 - 1962 (22 years)
Stuart Fergusson Victor Sutcliffe was a British painter and musician best known as the original bass guitarist of the Beatles. Sutcliffe left the band to pursue his career as a painter, having previously attended the Liverpool College of Art. Sutcliffe and John Lennon are credited with inventing the name "Beetles" , as they both liked Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets. They also had a fascination of group names with double meanings , so Lennon then came up with "The Beatles", from the word beat . As a member of the group when it was a five-piece band, Sutcliffe is one of several people sometim...
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George C. Griffin
1897 - 1990 (93 years)
George C. Griffin served in various positions at his alma mater, the Georgia Institute of Technology, most notably as dean of men from 1946 to 1964. He was known variously as "the best friend of all Tech men" and "Mr. Georgia Tech."
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Fred Clark
1914 - 1968 (54 years)
Frederick Leonard Clark was an American film and television character actor, often cast in authoritative roles. Early years Born in Lincoln, California, Clark was the son of Fred Clark Sr. He attended Stanford University with plans to become a doctor, but participation in a college production of Yellow Jack diverted his attention to acting. He changed his major to drama and later received a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While there, he was elected his class's most promising actor.
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John Keith Benton
1896 - 1956 (60 years)
John Keith Benton was an American theologian and university administrator. He served as the Dean of the Vanderbilt University Divinity School from 1939 to 1956. Early life John Keith Benton was born on May 24, 1896, in Banks, Alabama. His father was Arthur Franklin Benton and his mother, Martha Frederick.
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Veranus Alva Moore
1859 - 1931 (72 years)
Veranus Alva Moore was a U.S. bacteriologist and pathologist. Early life and education He was born in Hounsfield, New York. A Cornell University graduate and faculty member, Moore served as head of the United States Department of Agriculture's Division of Animal Pathology from 1895 to 1896. He also served as president of the Society of American Bacteriologists in 1910, and as dean of the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine from 1908 to 1929.
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Mitchell Siporin
1910 - 1976 (66 years)
Mitchell Siporin was a Social Realist American painter. Biography Mitchell Siporin was born on May 5, 1910, in New York City to Hyman, a truck driver, and Jennie Siporin, both immigrants from Poland, and grew up in Chicago. Siporin attended School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He did illustrations for Esquire and other magazines. Beginning in the mid-1930s, Siporin worked as a painter for the Illinois Art Project through the Works Progress Administration. Together with Edward Millman, he painted "the largest single mural project awarded for a post office by the Section of Fine Arts" in the...
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Giuliano da Sangallo
1445 - 1516 (71 years)
Giuliano da Sangallo was an Italian sculptor, architect and military engineer active during the Italian Renaissance. He is known primarily for being the favored architect of Lorenzo de' Medici, his patron. In this role, Giuliano designed a villa for Lorenzo as well as a monastery for Augustinians and a church where a miracle was said to have taken place. Additionally, Giuliano was commissioned to build multiple structures for Pope Julius II and Pope Leo X. Leon Battista Alberti and Filippo Brunelleschi heavily influenced Sangallo and in turn, he influenced other important Renaissance figures ...
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Anton Dereser
1757 - 1827 (70 years)
Anton Dereser was a Discalced Carmelite professor of hermeneutics and Oriental languages. Dereser was a Catholic representative of the Enlightenment, and promoted a rationalistic interpretation of the Bible. He had a marked tendency to take independent positions and defy authority—both secular and ecclesiastical—which involved him in numerous controversies and nearly cost him his life during the French Revolution.
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Dawson Dawson-Watson
1864 - 1939 (75 years)
Dawson Dawson-Watson was a British-born Impressionist painter who became famous in 1927 for winning the largest cash prize in American art, the Texas Wildflower Competitive Exhibition. He was one of the first members of the famous Impressionist colony in Giverny, France and was a prominent teacher in Hartford, Connecticut, St. Louis, Missouri and San Antonio, Texas.
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Lawrence Amos McLouth
1863 - 1927 (64 years)
Lawrence Amos McLouth, A.B., LL.D. was an American Germanic scholar, born at Ontonagon, Michigan He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1887, as a member of the Zeta Psi fraternity. He served as principal of the Danville, Illinois High School for three years, then proceeded to Europe for additional training, studying for two years at Leipzig, Heidelberg, and Munich. He returned to the University of Michigan as instructor in German. In 1895 he became professor of Germanic languages and literatures at New York University. He edited Huldrych Zwingli's sermons and some of the novels of Friedrich Gerstäcker and Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse .
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Julius Hübner
1806 - 1882 (76 years)
Rudolf Julius Benno Hübner was a German historical painter of the Düsseldorf school of painting. He was also known as a poet and the father of Emil Hübner, a distinguished classical scholar. Life Hübner was born at Oels in Silesia, studied at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin under Schadow, and in Düsseldorf. He first attracted attention by his picture of "Ruth and Boaz" . He traveled in Italy and resided for the most part at Düsseldorf until 1839. In that year he settled at Dresden, becoming a professor in the Academy of Arts in 1841 and director of the Gallery of Paintings in 1871. He obtained the great gold medal at Brussels in 1851.
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Gooroodas Banerjee
1844 - 1918 (74 years)
Sir Gooroodas Banerjee was a Bengali Indian judge of the Calcutta High Court. In 1890, he also became the first Indian Vice-Chancellor of University of Calcutta. Education He received his early education at the Oriental Seminary, and the Hare School at the Presidency College in Kolkata. the General Assembly's Institution , the University of Calcutta. He obtained an M.A. with a focus on Mathematics in 1865, winning a University medal for attaining first place in his examinations, and passed the B.L. examination in 1866. in 1877, he obtained a Doctorate in Law.
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Joseph Nollekens
1737 - 1823 (86 years)
Joseph Nollekens R.A. was a sculptor from London generally considered to be the finest British sculptor of the late 18th century. Life Nollekens was born on 11 August 1737 at 28 Dean Street, Soho, London, the son of the Flemish painter Josef Frans Nollekens who had moved from Antwerp to London in 1733. He studied first under another Flemish immigrant in London, the sculptor Peter Scheemakers, before studying and working as an antiques dealer, restorer and copier in Rome from 1760 or 1762. The sculptures he made in Rome included a marble of Timocles Before Alexander, for which he was awarded...
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Thomas Sully
1783 - 1872 (89 years)
Thomas Sully was an American portrait painter in the United States. Born in Great Britain, he lived most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He painted in the style of Thomas Lawrence. His subjects included national political leaders such as United States presidents: Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson, Revolutionary War hero General Marquis de Lafayette, and many leading musicians and composers. In addition to portraits of wealthy patrons, he painted landscapes and historical pieces such as the 1819 The Passage of the Delaware. His work was adapted for use on Unite...
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Willoughby D. Miller
1853 - 1907 (54 years)
Willoughby Dayton Miller was an American dentist and the first oral microbiologist. Biography Willoughy D. Miller was born in Alexandria, Ohio, and studied mathematics and physics at the University of Michigan. He traveled to Edinburgh to continue his studies, but financial problems caused him to move to Berlin where he was assisted by an American dentist Frank Abbot. Miller later married Abbot's daughter, Caroline. Becoming interested in his father-in-law's profession, Miller returned to the United States to train as a dentist at the Pennsylvania Dental College. This college merged with ...
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Charles James Martin
1886 - 1955 (69 years)
Charles James Martin was an American modernist artist and arts instructor. He worked in a variety of media including etching, lithography, water color, monotype, linocut, woodcut, oil, photography, mezzotint and silversmithing.
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Frans-H. van den Dungen
1898 - 1965 (67 years)
Frans-H. van den Dungen was a Belgian scientist and professor at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. In 1946 he was awarded the Francqui Prize on Exact Sciences. Among his students was the mathematician Paul Dedecker.
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Mary C. Whitman
1809 - 1875 (66 years)
Mary C. Whitman was an American educator who served as the second president of Mount Holyoke College from 1849 to 1850. She graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1839, taught there from 1840 to 1842, and was Associate Principal from 1842 to 1849 before becoming Head.
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Karol Estreicher
1827 - 1908 (81 years)
Karol Józef Teofil Estreicher was a Polish bibliographer and librarian who was a founder of the Polish Academy of Learning. While he is known as the "father of Polish bibliography", he is also considered the founder of the bibliographical method in literary research. His "monumental work", is called the "most outstanding bibliography of Polish books, and probably one of the most famous bibliographies in the world".
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Bradley Walker Tomlin
1899 - 1953 (54 years)
Bradley Walker Tomlin belonged to the generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists. He participated in the famous ‘’Ninth Street Show.’’ According to John I. H. Baur, Curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tomlin’s "life and his work were marked by a persistent, restless striving toward perfection, in a truly classical sense of the word, towards that “inner logic” of form which would produce a total harmony, an unalterable rightness, a sense of miraculous completion...It was only during the last five years of his life that the goal was fully reached, and his art flower...
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Gyula Benczúr
1844 - 1920 (76 years)
Gyula Benczúr was a Hungarian painter and art teacher. An "outstanding exponent of academicism", he specialized in portraits and historical scenes. He is "considered one of the greatest Hungarian masters of historicism".
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Domenichino
1581 - 1641 (60 years)
Domenico Zampieri , known by the diminutive Domenichino after his shortness, was an Italian Baroque painter of the Bolognese School of painters. Life Domenichino was born in Bologna, son of a shoemaker, and there initially studied under Denis Calvaert. After quarreling with Calvaert, he left to work in the Accademia degli Incamminati of the Carracci where, because of his small stature, he was nicknamed Domenichino, meaning "little Domenico" in Italian. He left Bologna for Rome in 1602 and became one of the most talented apprentices to emerge from Annibale Carracci's supervision. As a young ...
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Halil Pasha
1857 - 1939 (82 years)
Halil Pasha , was a Turkish painter and art teacher. He was one of Turkey's first Impressionists. Biography His family was originally from Rhodes and his father, Selim, was one of the founders of the Turkish Military Academy.
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Leonard Jaczewski
1858 - 1916 (58 years)
Leonard Jaczewski Biography After graduating from high school in Warsaw Jaczewski began his studies at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute, graduating in 1883. Following this, he worked in Irkutsk, taking part in an expedition to the summit of Mönkh Saridag and acting as an expert in to the gold mining industry in Transbaikal. He is credited with discovering and naming several glaciers, as well as making many geomorphological and meteorological observations. In addition to this he spent time studying the geology of the shores of Lake Khövsgöl in Mongolia.
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Adelaide Hiebel
1885 - 1965 (80 years)
Adelaide Hiebel was an artist and illustrator who worked for the Gerlach Barklow Co. in Joliet, Illinois, a manufacturer of art calendars. Hiebel preferred to work in pastels, and was known for her photographic detail and portraits of women, especially "women and dogs, mothers with infants, infant portraits and small children in cute situations."
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Justin M. Andrews
1902 - 1967 (65 years)
Justin Meredith Andrews was an American public health administrator and parasitologist, specialising in malaria. Early life and family Andrews was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on August 28, 1902, the son of Clarke Willett Andrews , who worked with the New England Telephone Company, and his wife Annie Frances, née Bliven . The family descended from John MacAndrews, who settled in North Kingstown in 1671. Andrews married twice: firstly in 1927 to Arline Sylvia, daughter of Henry and Hattie Anderson; and secondly in 1957 to Jean Simonne, daughter of Harry W. and Elaine Grant. With his first...
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John Saylor Coon
1854 - 1938 (84 years)
John Saylor Coon was the first Mechanical Engineering and Drawing Professor at Georgia Tech, and he was also the first chair of Georgia Tech's Mechanical Engineering Department. Coon made significant contributions to the school during his 35-year career at Georgia Tech.
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Alphaeus Philemon Cole
1876 - 1988 (112 years)
Alphaeus Philemon Cole was an American artist, engraver and etcher. He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of noted wood-engraver Timothy Cole. At the time of his death, at age 112 years and 136 days, Alphaeus was the world's oldest verified living man and the oldest living person in the United States.
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Plato T. Durham
1873 - 1930 (57 years)
Plato Tracy Durham was the first Dean of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, serving from 1914 to 1918. Background Plato Tracy Durham was born on September 9, 1873, in Shelby, North Carolina. He was the son of Captain Plato Durham of North Carolina and Nora Tracy Durham Dixon, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. James Wright Tracy. Dr. Durham was the stepson of a Methodist minister and the grandchild of a Methodist minister and was well trained in the workings of the church.
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Joseph Sakunoshin Motoda
1862 - 1928 (66 years)
Rt. Rev. Joseph Sakunoshin Motoda D.D. was the first Japanese born Bishop of Tokyo in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai, the Anglican Church in Japan. Education and Church Ministry Joseph Sakunoshin Motoda was ordained in America in 1893. He studied variously at Kenyon College, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Motoda obtained a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1895 and was granted a Doctorate in Divinity from the Philadelphia Divinity School in 1916.
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William J. Vaughn
1834 - 1912 (78 years)
William J. Vaughn was an American university professor, school principal, librarian and book collector. He was one of the earliest Professors at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Theodoros Manousis
1793 - 1858 (65 years)
Theodoros Manousis was a Greek historian, judge, benefactor, archaeologist and the first professor of history of the University of Athens. Biography Manousis was born in 1793 in Siatista, then Ottoman Empire . His father was a rich merchant and sent him study in the Leipzig University and later in the University of Göttingen. He met with Theoklitos Farmakidis and with him he was briefly the director of the Hermes o Logios. He was imprisoned for a while by the Austrian authorities for revolutionary activities. He continued his studies in 1828 in Italy in history and archaeology, and returned to Greece in 1830.
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Sylwester Kaliski
1925 - 1978 (53 years)
Sylwester Kaliski was a Polish engineer, professor and military general. He was a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences . Born in Toruń, Kaliski was a specialist in the field of applied physics. He developed the theory of continuous amplification of ultra and hyper-sounds in semiconductive crystals and obtained plasma temperature of tens of millions of kelvins using laser impulse. He died in Warsaw, Poland in car crash. It has been speculated that Kaliski was killed by the Soviet KGB, as he headed the Polish clandestine program of developing thermonuclear devices intended for military use....
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Joseph Padur Bauke
1931 - 1983 (52 years)
Joseph P. Bauke was an academic specializing in German literature and was a Chairman of the German Department at Columbia University, chief editor of The Germanic Review, and President of the Germanistic Society of America.
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William Andrew Irwin
1884 - 1967 (83 years)
William Andrew Irwin , was a Canadian educator. He was Professor of Old Testament Languages and Literature at the University of Chicago and the Southern Methodist University, Wheaton, Maryland, where his papers can be found today. He earned a B.A., M.A., and B.D. from Victoria University, Toronto.
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James Collinson
1825 - 1881 (56 years)
James Collinson was a Victorian painter who was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood from 1848 to 1850. Life He was born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire and was the son of a bookseller. He entered the Royal Academy Schools, and was a fellow-student of Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
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F. W. Moorman
1872 - 1919 (47 years)
Frederic William Moorman was a poet and playwright, and Professor of English Language at the University of Leeds from 1912 to 1918. Biography Moorman grew up in Devon. He married Frances Beatrice Humpidge and was the father of John Moorman, who would become Bishop of Ripon.
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Edmund Randolph Peaslee
1814 - 1878 (64 years)
Edmund Randolph Peaslee was an American physician. Peaslee, son of James and Abigail Peaslee, was born in Newton, N. H., January 22, 1814. He graduated at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N. H., in 1836, and after a year spent in teaching in Lebanon, N. H., returned to the college as tutor. He retired from the tutorship in 1839, having in the meantime begun his professional studies in the Medical School connected with Dartmouth, and then continuing them at Yale Medical School, where he graduated in 1840. In 1841 he began practice as a physician in Hanover, and a year later became Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Dartmouth.
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Robert Patterson
1743 - 1824 (81 years)
Robert Patterson was an Irish-American mathematician and director of the United States Mint from 1806 to 1824. He was a professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania from 1779 to 1810, professor of natural history and mathmatics and vice provost from 1810 to 1813. At the request of Thomas Jefferson, he advised Meriwether Lewis on the purchase and usage of navigational equipment for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
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Fairman Rogers
1833 - 1900 (67 years)
Fairman Rogers was an American civil engineer, educator, and philanthropist. Early life Fairman Rogers was born in Philadelphia on November 15, 1833. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1853, and taught civil engineering there from 1855 to 1871. He was one of four professors who founded its Department of Mines, Arts and Manufacturers , and he served as a University Trustee . As an undergraduate, he was a founding member of its Zeta Psi fraternity, Sigma chapter .
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George Washington Vanderbilt II
1862 - 1914 (52 years)
George Washington Vanderbilt II was an American art collector and member of the prominent Vanderbilt family, which amassed a huge fortune through steamboats, railroads, and various business enterprises. He commissioned the construction of a 250-room mansion, the largest privately owned home in the United States, which he named Biltmore Estate.
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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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