The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
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List of the most influential people in Computer Science,
#2951
Jit Bose
#70126
Overall Influence
Prosenjit K. "Jit" Bose is a Canadian mathematician and computer scientist who works at Carleton University as a professor in the School of Computer Science and associate dean of research and graduate studies for the Faculty of Science. His research concerns graph algorithms and computational geometry, including work on geometric spanners and geographic routing in wireless ad hoc networks.
Go to Profile#2952
Charles Ling
#53585
Overall Influence
Charles X. Ling is a computer scientist who specializes in research on Data Mining and Machine Learning. He obtained his BSc from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1985, and PhD from University of Pennsylvania in 1989.
Go to Profile#2953
Daniel E. Atkins
#50506
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Daniel E. Atkins III is the W. K. Kellogg Professor of Community Informatics at University of Michigan. He is also a professor of Information at the University of Michigan School of Information and a professor of both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the College of Engineering. From June 2006 to June 2008, he was the inaugural Director of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the U.S. National Science Foundation. From July 2008 to June 2012 he was Associate Vice President for Research Cyberinfrastructure and Chairman of the U of Michigan Information Technology Governance Council.
Go to Profile#2954
Christoph Koutschan
#22726
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Christoph Koutschan is a German mathematician and computer scientist. He is currently with the Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Education Christoph Koutschan is a German mathematician and computer scientist. He studied computer science at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany from 1999 to 2005 and then moved to the Research Institute for Symbolic Computation in Linz, Austria, where he completed his PhD in symbolic computation in 2009 under the supervision of Peter Paule.
Go to Profile#2955
David C. Coleman
#87599
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
#2956
Jens Lehmann
#62823
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Jens Lehmann is a computer scientist, who works with knowledge graphs and artificial intelligence. He is a principal scientist at Amazon, an honorary professor at TU Dresden and a fellow of European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems. Formerly, he was a full professor at the University of Bonn, Germany and lead scientist for Conversational AI and Knowledge Graphs at Fraunhofer IAIS.
Go to Profile#2957
Shigeyuki Yokoyama
#87696
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
#2958
Matt Curtin
#47190
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Matt Curtin is a computer scientist and entrepreneur in Columbus, Ohio best known for his work in cryptography and firewall systems. He is the founder of Interhack Corporation, first faculty advisor of Open Source Club at The Ohio State University, and lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University, where he teaches a Common Lisp course. The author of two books, Developing Trust: Online Privacy and Security and Brute Force: Cracking the Data Encryption Standard.
Go to Profile#2959
Marco Iansiti
#30739
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Marco Iansiti is a professor at the Harvard Business School, whose primary research interest is technology and operations strategy and the management of innovation. He is the David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration, heads the Technology and Operations Management Unit, and chairs the Digital Initiative. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Keystone Strategy, a consultancy focused on strategy, data sciences and economics for technology clients.
Go to Profile#2960
W. Keith Edwards
#62845
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
W. Keith Edwards is a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Director of the GVU Center at Georgia Tech. Edwards’ research lies generally in the fields of human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work . He has chaired and published papers in top-tier academic conferences in these fields.
Go to Profile#2961
Fei Richard Yu
#87738
Overall Influence
#2962
Peter Holzer
#87744
Overall Influence
#2963
Erhard Rahm
#81424
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Erhard Rahm is a German computer scientist and professor at the University of Leipzig. His research areas are database systems, data integration and Big Data. Biography Rahm studied computer science at Kaiserslautern University of Technology from 1979 to 1984 where he also earned his Ph.D. in 1988. From 1988 to 1989 he was a post-doc at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne. He was an assistant professor at Kaiserslautern University of Technology from 1989 to 1994 and received the Venia legendi in 1993. Since 1994 he is a full professor for databases at the University of Leipzig.
Go to Profile#2964
Edith Cohen
#64493
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Edith Cohen is an Israeli and American computer scientist specializing in data mining and algorithms for big data. She is also known for her research on peer-to-peer networks. She works for Google in Mountain View, California, and as a visiting professor at Tel Aviv University in Israel.
Go to Profile#2965
Alexander Repenning
#38860
Overall Influence
Alexander Repenning is the Director of the Scalable Game Design project, a computer science professor adjunct, a founder of AgentSheets Inc., and a member of the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Repenning is the inventor of drag and drop blocks programming. His research interests include computer science education, end-user programmable agents, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence.
Go to Profile#2966
Calvin Gotlieb
#46127
Overall Influence
1921 - 2016 (95 years)
Calvin Carl "Kelly" Gotlieb, was a Canadian professor and computer scientist who has been called the "Father of Computing" in Canada. He was a Professor in Computer Science at the University of Toronto.
Go to Profile#2967
Paola Inverardi
#55638
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Paola Inverardi is an Italian computer scientist specializing in software engineering. She is a professor in the Department of Information Engineering, Computer Science, and Mathematics at the University of L'Aquila in Italy, and the former rector of the university.
Go to Profile#2968
Daniel Karrenberg
#43498
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Daniel Karrenberg is a German computer scientist and one of Europe's Internet pioneer who lives in the Netherlands. Biography From 1981 to 1987, Karrenberg was a scientific assistant and network administrator at TU Dortmund. In 1982, he helped set up EUnet, the first European Internet service provider.
Go to Profile#2969
Jeffrey Skolnick
#74683
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jeffrey Skolnick is an American computational biologist. He is currently a Georgia Institute of Technology School of Biology Professor, the Director of the Center for the Study of Systems Biology, the Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair, the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology, the Director of the Integrative BioSystems Institute, and was previously the Scientific Advisor at Intellimedix.
Go to Profile#2970
John T. Riedl
#75158
Overall Influence
1962 - 2013 (51 years)
John Thomas Riedl was an American computer scientist and the McKnight Distinguished Professor at the University of Minnesota. His published works include highly influential research on the social web, recommendation systems, and collaborative systems.
Go to Profile#2971
Nicholas Philippe Ayache
#88121
Overall Influence
#2972
David E. Keyes
#36736
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
David E. Keyes is a Senior Associate to the President of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and the Director of the Extreme Computing Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology . He was the inaugural Dean of the Division of Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering at KAUST and remains an adjunct professor in Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University and an affiliate of several laboratories of the U.S. Department of Energy. With backgrounds in engineering, applied mathematics, and computer science, he works at the ...
Go to Profile#2973
Yukihiro Ozaki
#88168
Overall Influence
#2974
Ego Seeman
#88222
Overall Influence
#2975
Hans Petter Langtangen
#50418
Overall Influence
1962 - 2016 (54 years)
Hans Petter Langtangen was a Norwegian scientist trained in mechanics and scientific computing. Langtangen was the director of the Centre for Biomedical Computing, a Norwegian Center of Excellence hosted by Simula Research Laboratory. He was a professor of scientific computing at the University of Oslo, and was editor-in-chief of SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing 2011–2015.
Go to Profile#2976
Kenneth Nigel Timmis
#88242
Overall Influence
#2977
Bernhard M. Hämmerli
#64711
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Bernhard M. Hämmerli is a Swiss computer scientist in the fields of communications, networks and information security, specifically critical infrastructure protection in the European Union. He is teaching internationally, as a professor at both the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He was president of the Swiss Informatics Society from 2009 to 2014 and chair of the platform ICT Security of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Science from 2012. He has directed a new academic course Cyber Security at the Lucerne School of Information Technol...
Go to Profile#2978
Yuval Elovici
#60720
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Yuval Elovici is a computer scientist. He is a professor in the Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev , where he is the incumbent of the Davide and Irene Sala Chair in Homeland Security Research. He is the director of the Cyber Security Research Center at BGU and the founder and director of the Telekom Innovation Laboratories at Ben-Gurion University. In addition to his roles at BGU, he also serves as the lab director of Singapore University of Technology and Design’s ST Electronics-SUTD Cyber Security Laboratory, as well as the research director of iTrust.
Go to Profile#2979
Birgit Vogel-Heuser
#59176
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Birgit Vogel-Heuser is a German computer scientist and professor at The Technical University of Munich . She has been cited over 5,000 times. Vogel-Heuser's research focuses on systems and software engineering, and modeling of distributed embedded systems.
Go to Profile#2980
Janet T. Powell
#88333
Overall Influence
#2981
Gopal Gaonkar
#42458
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Gopal H. Gaonkar is a professor of engineering at Florida Atlantic University, Florida. His research interest is in Helicopter dynamics, Floquet theory and Large-Scale and parallel computing. Gaonkar is a recipient of American Helicopter Society's Fellow Award in 2005, was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Helicopter Society, and a member of the AHS Technical Council.
Go to Profile#2982
Chris Verhoef
#63711
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Christopher Verhoef is a Dutch computer scientist, and Professor of Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Biography Born in Kedichem in 1962, Verhoef received his PhD in computer science at the University of Amsterdam in 1992 under supervision of Jan Bergstra with the thesis "Linear unary operators in process algebra."
Go to Profile#2983
Hans Wortmann
#40067
Overall Influence
1950 - 2022 (72 years)
Johannes Casper Wortmann was a Dutch computer scientist and professor of Information Management at the University of Groningen, known for his contributions in the field of risk management and Industry requirements.
Go to Profile#2984
Michael W Kattan
#88445
Overall Influence
#2985
John Argyris
#9830
Overall Influence
1913 - 2004 (91 years)
Johann Hadji Argyris FRS was a Greek pioneer of computer applications in science and engineering, among the creators of the finite element method , and lately Professor at the University of Stuttgart and Director of the Institute of Structural Mechanics and Dynamics in Aerospace Engineering.
Go to Profile#2986
Aaron Clauset
#36541
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Aaron Clauset is an American computer scientist who works in the areas of Network Science, Machine Learning, and Complex Systems. He is currently a professor of computer science at the University of Colorado Boulder and is external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.
Go to Profile#2987
Per Michael Johansen
#30059
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Per Michael Johansen is a Danish engineer and physicist and the current rector of Aalborg University . Early life Johansen was born in 1960 in the small holiday and fishing village Agger in the Thy district, which is located in the northwestern part of Jutland in Denmark. He graduated from high school in Thisted in 1980. He subsequently studied Technical Physics at Aalborg University and holds a master's degree within this particular field which he was awarded in 1986. In addition to his master's degree he also holds a PhD and a title of Doctor of Science in physics .
Go to Profile#2988
Zaverio M Ruggeri
#88594
Overall Influence
#2989
Ken Musgrave
#59071
Overall Influence
1955 - 2018 (63 years)
Forest Kenton Musgrave was a professor at The George Washington University in the USA. A computer artist who worked with fractal images, he worked on the Bryce landscape software and later as CEO/CTO of Pandromeda, Inc. developed and designed the innovative MojoWorld software.
Go to Profile#2990
Susan B. Horwitz
#71326
Overall Influence
1955 - 2014 (59 years)
Susan Beth Horwitz was an American computer scientist noted for her research on programming languages and software engineering, and in particular on program slicing and dataflow-analysis. She had several best paper and an impact paper award mentioned below under awards.
Go to Profile#2991
Barbara Hayes-Roth
#74327
Overall Influence
Barbara Hayes-Roth is an American computer scientist and psychologist whose research in artificial intelligence includes work on knowledge acquisition, automated planning and scheduling, spatial cognition, the blackboard system, adaptation, and intelligent behavior in interactive storytelling. She is a senior research scientist and lecturer in computer science at Stanford University.
Go to Profile#2992
Marianne Winslett
#76918
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Marianne Southall Winslett is a professor emerita of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, specializing in databases. She is known for her "possible models" approach to belief revision.
Go to Profile#2993
Daniel Murphy
#66566
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Daniel L. Murphy is an American computer scientist notable for his involvement in the development of TECO , the operating systems TENEX and TOPS-20, and email. Biography Murphy attended MIT from 1961 and graduated in 1965. In 1962, he created the text editor Text Editor and Corrector , later implemented on most of the PDP computers. He also developed a simple software demand paging system in software for the PDP-1 while at MIT.
Go to Profile#2994
Sami Haddadin
#38854
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Sami Haddadin is an electrical engineer, computer scientist, and university professor in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence . Since April 2018, he has been the executive director of the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich and holds the Chair of Robotics and Systems Intelligence.
Go to Profile#2995
Alan Boyde
#88777
Overall Influence
#2996
Ali Asghar Farhadi
#88845
Overall Influence
#2997
Mark E. Stickel
#77654
Overall Influence
1947 - 2013 (66 years)
Mark E. Stickel was a computer scientist working in the fields of automated theorem proving and artificial intelligence. He worked at SRI International for over 30 years, and was Principal Scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Center.
Go to Profile#2998
Leonardo G Cohen
#88882
Overall Influence
#2999
Yaniv Erlich
#51435
Overall Influence
1979 - Present (47 years)
Yaniv Erlich is an Israeli-American scientist. He formerly served as an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University and was the Chief Science Officer of MyHeritage. Erlich's work combines computer science and genomics.
Go to Profile#3000
Christian Wittekind
#88889
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
