The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.
We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.
To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Computer Science,
#3401
Vida Dujmović
#25312
Overall Influence
Vida Dujmović is a Canadian computer scientist and mathematician known for her research in graph theory and graph algorithms, and particularly for graph drawing, for the structural theory of graph width parameters including treewidth and queue number, and for the use of these parameters in the parameterized complexity of graph drawing. She is a professor of electrical engineering & computer science at the University of Ottawa, where she holds the University Research Chair in Structural and Algorithmic Graph Theory.
Go to Profile#3402
Anupam Saraph
#74581
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Anupam Saraph is an innovator and polymath who has been an advisor in governance, informatics and strategic planning. Anupam Saraph obtained a PhD from the University of Groningen, Netherlands in Informatics while working with the IMAGE team at the RIVM and IVEM in the Netherlands.
Go to Profile#3403
Paul Jones
#46914
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Paul Jones is a graduate of NC State University and the Director of ibiblio, a contributor-run, digital library of public domain and creative commons media, administered by the Office of Information Technology Service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. On the basis of his bachelor's in Computer Science from NC State University and MFA from Warren Wilson College, he has become Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Information and Library Science, at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Go to Profile#3404
John Humphrys
#7096
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Desmond John Humphrys is a Welsh broadcaster. From 1981 to 1987 he was the main presenter of the Nine O'Clock News, the flagship BBC News television programme, and from 1987 until 2019 he presented on the BBC Radio 4 breakfast programme Today. He was the host of the BBC Two television quiz show Mastermind from 2003 to 2021, for a total of 735 episodes. Humphrys now presents a regular Sunday afternoon show on Classic FM, where he also sometimes fills in on the weekday More Music Breakfast show.
Go to Profile#3405
Henry G. Burger
#97460
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
#3406
Edward M. Riseman
#75448
Overall Influence
1942 - 2007 (65 years)
Edward M. Riseman was an American computer scientist and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Riseman was a pioneer in the field of computer vision and artificial intelligence who made significant contributions to image database and content-based image retrieval, including the design of one of the first knowledge-based image understanding systems that handled very complex natural images. He was a co-author on the landmark paper on a four-step process for extracting straight lines from intensity images. Riseman was a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial...
Go to Profile#3407
Alberto Bemporad
#97471
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
#3408
Timothy Lillicrap
#83569
Overall Influence
Timothy P. Lillicrap is a Canadian neuroscientist and AI researcher, adjunct professor at University College London, and staff research scientist at Google DeepMind, where he has been involved in the AlphaGo and AlphaZero projects mastering the games of Go, Chess and Shogi. His research focuses on machine learning and statistics for optimal control and decision making, as well as using these mathematical frameworks to understand how the brain learns. He has developed algorithms and approaches for exploiting deep neural networks in the context of reinforcement learning, and new recurrent memory...
Go to Profile#3409
Juan Carlos De Martin
#76985
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Juan Carlos De Martin is an Italian academic. He is a full professor at the DAUIN Department of the Polytechnic of Turin, where he co-founded and co-directs the Nexa Center of Internet and Society. Since 2011, he is a Berkman Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society of Harvard University and Senior Visiting Researcher at the Internet and Society Laboratory of Keio University . It is known for its activities in the Internet and the Society, with particular attention to issues of copyright in the digital age and net neutrality. Often writes in the daily "La Stampa" as a columnist on issues related to digital technologies and their impact on society.
Go to Profile#3410
Don Batory
#93174
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Don Batory is an American computer scientist, currently the David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professor at University of Texas at Austin. Don Batory was the first person to receive the most influential paper award which was established by the Software Product Line Conference in 2016
Go to Profile#3411
Herwig Mannaert
#74965
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Herwig Mannaert is a Belgian academic and Professor at the University of Antwerp, Dean of the Management Information Systems Department, and Executive Professor at the University of Antwerp Management School, known for his work on digital image processing, software architecture, and open source software.
Go to Profile#3412
Coke Reed
#50325
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Coke Stevenson Reed is an American mathematician and inventor from Austin, Texas. He is the inventor of the proprietary Data Vortex network. Implementations of this network into Supercomputers use a novel topology and switch logic based on his and Krystyna Kuperberg's solution to a problem posed by Stan Ulam in the Scottish Book.
Go to Profile#3413
Frank Hutter
#97622
Overall Influence
#3414
Subhasish Mitra
#41026
Overall Influence
Subhasish Mitra is an American Computer Science and Electrical Engineering professor at Stanford University. He directs the Stanford Robust Systems Group, leads the Computation Focus Area of the Stanford SystemX Alliance, and is a member of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. His research ranges across Robust Computing, NanoSystems, Electronic Design Automation , and Neurosciences.
Go to Profile#3415
Dov Dori
#34922
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Dov Dori is an Israeli-American computer scientist, and Professor of Information Systems Engineering at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, known for the development of Object Process Methodology . The ideas underlying OPM were published for the first time in 1995.
Go to Profile#3416
Phyllis Fox
#18066
Overall Influence
1923 - 2017 (94 years)
Phyllis Ann Fox was an American mathematician and computer scientist. Early life and education Fox was born on March 13, 1923, and raised in Colorado. She did her undergraduate studies at Wellesley College, earning a B.A. in mathematics in 1944.
Go to Profile#3417
Kenneth Kidd
#75766
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Kenneth Kay Kidd is an American human geneticist and emeritus professor of genetics at Yale University School of Medicine. He is known for his work on the role of genetics in disorders such as manic depression and schizophrenia, on human genetic variation and its relationship to geography, and the Out of Africa theory of human evolution. He also helped discover the DRD4-7R gene that has been linked to exploratory behaviour.
Go to Profile#3418
Jean-Daniel Fekete
#80195
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Jean-Daniel Fekete is a French computer scientist. Education Fekete received his PhD from the Paris-Saclay University in 1996. He obtained his Habilitation in 2005, entitled "Nouvelle génération d'Interfaces Homme-Machine pour mieux agir et mieux comprendre" at Université Paris-Sud 11 . The jury was Joëlle Coutaz , Saul Greenberg , Ben Shneiderman , Michel Beaudouin-Lafon , Jean-Gabriel Ganascia , Guy Mélançon and Claude Puech .
Go to Profile#3419
Blaž Zupan
#55240
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Blaž Zupan is a Slovenian computer scientist and university professor, * 26 January 1968, Postojna, Slovenia. Career After finishing the Bežigrad Grammar School in 1986, Zupan graduated in computer science at the University of Ljubljana in 1991. Next, he received an MS degree in computer science from University of Houston in 1993 under the mentorship of prof. dr. Albert Mo Kim Cheng. In 1997 he received his PhD degree in computer science from the University of Ljubljana under the mentorship of prof. dr. Ivan Bratko. After spending two years as a postdoc researcher at the Jožef Stefan Institute...
Go to Profile#3420
Karl Bringmann
#97716
Overall Influence
Karl Bringmann is a German theoretical computer scientist. He is currently senior researcher at Max Planck Institute for Informatics. Biography Bringmann earned his doctorate from Saarland University under the supervision of Kurt Mehlhorn.
Go to Profile#3421
Hossein Hosseinzadeh
#97731
Overall Influence
#3422
Per K Andersen
#97739
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
#3423
Deliang Chen
#90492
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Deliang Chen is a Chinese-Swedish climatologist who is August Röhss Chair of the Department of Earth Sciences of University of Gothenburg. He is a fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters.
Go to Profile#3424
Hironobu Sasano
#97773
Overall Influence
#3425
Aleksandra Przegalińska
#56316
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Aleksandra Katarzyna Przegalińska-Skierkowska is a Polish futurist. She is an associate professor of management and artificial intelligence as well as a vice-rector at Kozminski University. Life Przegalińska is a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and the Center for Collective Intelligence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also a visiting scholar at the Labor & Worklife Center at Harvard University.
Go to Profile#3426
David Lazer
#41460
Overall Influence
David Lazer is a distinguished professor of political science and computer and information science at Northeastern University, as well as the co-director of the NULab of Texts, Maps, and Networks. Life
Go to Profile#3427
Vicente Arroyo
#97810
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
#3428
Hermann Stoll
#97822
Overall Influence
#3429
Osamu Takeuchi
#97826
Overall Influence
#3430
Jie Lu
#93411
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Jie Lu is a scientist in the area of computational intelligence and Distinguished Professor at the University of Technology Sydney. In 2000, Lu earned her PhD from Curtin University in Perth. She made fundamental contributions in the areas of fuzzy transfer learning, concept drift, data-driven decision support systems, and recommender systems.
Go to Profile#3431
Joseph E. Schwartz
#97895
Overall Influence
#3432
H. V. Jagadish
#97898
Overall Influence
Hosagrahar Visvesvaraya Jagadish is a computer scientist in the field of database systems research. He is a Fellow of ACM, Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of AAAS, the Distinguished University Professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the director of MIDAS , and a Senior Scientific Director of the National Center for Integrative Biomedical Informatics established by the National Institutes of Health.
Go to Profile#3433
Thomas S. Lundgren
#36337
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (91 years)
Thomas S. Lundgren is an Americann fluid dynamicist and Professor Emeritus of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Minnesota He is known for his work in the field of theoretical fluid dynamics. In 2006, Lundgren received Fluid Dynamics Prize by the American Physical Society "for his insightful theoretical contributions to numerous areas of fluid mechanics, most notably in the fields of turbulence and vortex dynamics"
Go to Profile#3434
Paul Horn
#48296
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Paul M. Horn is an American computer scientist and solid state physicist who has made contributions to pervasive computing, pioneered the use of copper and self-assembly in chip manufacturing, and he helped manage the development of deep computing, an important tool that provides business decision makers with the ability to analyze and develop solutions to very complex and difficult problems.
Go to Profile#3435
Prashant Shenoy
#84825
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Prashant Shenoy is an Indian-American Computer Scientist. He is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is known for his contributions to distributed computing, computer networks, cloud computing, and computational sustainability.
Go to Profile#3436
Kevin Marsh
#97411
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Kevin Marsh is a British Malariologist, academic and a researcher. He is a Professor of Tropical Medicine and Director of Africa Oxford Initiative at University of Oxford. He is also a senior advisor at African Academy of Sciences.
Go to Profile#3437
Peter Gzowski
#10151
Overall Influence
1934 - 2002 (68 years)
Peter John Gzowski , known colloquially as "Mr. Canada", or "Captain Canada", was a Canadian broadcaster, writer and reporter, most famous for his work on the CBC radio shows This Country in the Morning and Morningside. His first biographer argued that Gzowski's contribution to Canadian media must be considered in the context of efforts by a generation of Canadian nationalists to understand and express Canada's cultural identity. Gzowski wrote books, hosted television shows, and worked at a number of newspapers and at Maclean's magazine. Gzowski was known for a friendly, warm, interviewing s...
Go to Profile#3438
Monty Denneau
#73512
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Monty M. Denneau is a computer architect and mathematician. Denneau was awarded the 2002 Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award for "ingenious and sustained contributions to designs and implementations at the frontier of high performance computing leading to widely used industrial products."
Go to Profile#3439
Laura Chappell
#75482
Overall Influence
Laura Chappell is an American researcher and educator. She is best known as the founder of Chappell University, Wireshark University and the WCNA Certification program . She has authored several publications on Wireshark including:Wireshark Network Analysis: the Official Wireshark Certified Network Analyst Study GuideWireshark 101: Essential Skills for Network AnalysisChappell's career began in 1989 at Novell, Inc., where she developed an interest in newly emergent Internet and networking technology. She subsequently worked as a road show presenter and course developer.
Go to Profile#3440
Alexander Meduna
#97995
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Alexander Meduna is a theoretical computer scientist and expert on compiler design, formal languages and automata. He is a professor of Computer Science at the Brno University of Technology. Formerly, he taught theoretical computer science at various European and American universities, including the University of Missouri, where he spent a decade teaching advanced topics of formal language theory. He is the author of several books and over sixty papers related to the subject matter.
Go to Profile#3441
Harold P Erickson
#97997
Overall Influence
#3442
Tülay Adalı
#74823
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (61 years)
Tülay Adalı is a Distinguished University Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, whose research interests include signal processing, machine learning, and data fusion.
Go to Profile#3443
Keiji Tanaka
#98054
Overall Influence
#3444
Dana Pe'er
#44301
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Dana Pe'er , Chair and Professor in Computational and Systems Biology Program at Sloan Kettering Institute is a researcher in computational systems biology. A Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator since 2021, she was previously a professor at Columbia Department of Biological Sciences. Pe'er's research focuses on understanding the organization, function and evolution of molecular networks, particularly how genetic variations alter the regulatory network and how these genetic variations can cause cancer.
Go to Profile#3445
Mark Braverman
#77169
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Mark Braverman is an Israeli mathematician and theoretical computer scientist. He was awarded an EMS Prize in 2016 as well as Presburger Award in the same year. In 2019, he was awarded the Alan T. Waterman Award. In 2022 he won the IMU Abacus Medal.
Go to Profile#3446
Amina Doumane
#82684
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
Amina Doumane is a Moroccan computer scientist who on during 2017 won the French Giles-Kahn prize for the best doctoral thesis in France. Her thesis was on the subject On the infinitary proof theory of logics with fixed points. On January 31 2018, Doumane was presented with the award by the French computer science society .
Go to Profile#3447
Francis Guillemin
#98127
Overall Influence
#3448
Xiaobo Chen
#98132
Overall Influence
#3449
Kristine Ensrud
#98142
Overall Influence
#3450
Haibo He
#98161
Overall Influence
